Which School Responsibilities Actually Attract a TLR?

The five-part test, in full

Most writing about TLRs describes the tiers — TLR1 for substantial and sustained responsibility, TLR2 for clearly defined responsibility, TLR3 for time-limited projects — and stops there. Our TLR payments guide covers those tiers, their current values, and how to negotiate one. What that framing leaves out is that the tiers are the second question. The first question, which a school is legally required to answer before it reaches the tiers at all, is whether the responsibility qualifies for a TLR in the first place.

That question has a precise statutory answer. STPCD paragraph 20.4 provides that, before awarding any TLR, the relevant body must be satisfied that the teacher's responsibilities include a significant responsibility that is not required of all classroom teachers and that:

• (a) is focused on teaching and learning;
• (b) requires the exercise of a teacher's professional skills and judgement;
• (c) requires the teacher to lead, manage and develop a subject or curriculum area; or to lead and manage pupil development across the curriculum;
• (d) has an impact on the educational progress of pupils other than the teacher's assigned classes or groups of pupils; and
• (e) involves leading, developing and enhancing the teaching practice of other staff.

Two structural carve-outs sit around that list, and both matter enormously in practice.

The first is in the opening words of paragraph 20.4 itself: sub-paragraphs (c) and (e) do not have to apply to the award of a TLR3. A fixed-term TLR3 therefore only has to satisfy (a), (b) and (d) — focused on teaching and learning, requiring professional skills and judgement, and affecting pupils beyond your own classes. That is a materially easier test, and it is the structural reason so many named responsibilities end up as TLR3s rather than as TLR1s or TLR2s. It is not always a school being cheap; sometimes it is a school correctly identifying that the role cannot meet limbs (c) and (e).

The second is paragraph 20.5, which applies only at the top tier: before awarding a TLR1, the relevant body must additionally be satisfied that the sustained additional responsibility includes line management responsibility for a significant number of people. The STPCD does not define "a significant number", and that vagueness is deliberate — what is significant in a three-form-entry primary is different from what is significant in a 1,800-pupil secondary. What is not ambiguous is the direction: a role with no line management cannot properly be a TLR1, however demanding it is.

How to actually apply it

The test is cumulative for TLR1 and TLR2 — the word at the end of limb (d) is "and", not "or". A responsibility that satisfies four of the five limbs brilliantly and fails the fifth does not qualify for an ongoing TLR. This is the single most common misreading, and it is what produces the mismatch between what teachers feel they should be paid for and what the framework actually recognises.

The limb that does most of the excluding is (c): leading, managing and developing a subject or curriculum area, or leading and managing pupil development across the curriculum. That phrasing is narrower than "any significant school responsibility". It contemplates two shapes of role — a curricular one and a pastoral-across-the-curriculum one — and a great many genuinely demanding school jobs are neither.

The limb that does the second most work is (e): leading, developing and enhancing the teaching practice of other staff. A role can be enormously time-consuming and involve no development of anyone else's teaching at all. Administrative and compliance roles, in particular, routinely fail here.

With that framing, here is how six named responsibilities that teachers most often ask about actually score.

Designated Safeguarding Lead

The DSL role is statutory, in the sense that every school must have one. Annex B of Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 provides that "governing bodies and proprietors should ensure an appropriate senior member of staff, from the school or college leadership team, is appointed to the role of designated safeguarding lead", that the postholder "should take lead responsibility for safeguarding and child protection (including online safety and understanding the filtering and monitoring systems and processes in place)", and that "this should be explicit in the role holder's job description".

It goes further on resourcing than most statutory guidance does. KCSIE states that the role "carries a significant level of responsibility, and they should be given the additional time, funding, training, resources and support they need to carry out the role effectively", and lists additional responsibilities including advising and supporting other staff on child welfare, safeguarding and child protection matters, taking part in strategy discussions and inter-agency meetings, and contributing to the assessment of children.

Against the paragraph 20.4 test, a DSL role held by a classroom teacher scores strongly on (b) — it plainly requires the exercise of professional skills and judgement — and strongly on (d), since safeguarding responsibility extends across the whole pupil body rather than your own classes. Limb (a) is arguable: the DfE's framing of safeguarding as underpinning effective education supports it, but a school taking a narrow reading of "focused on teaching and learning" can resist it. Limb (c) is the difficult one, and the credible route through it is "lead and manage pupil development across the curriculum" rather than the subject-leadership half. Limb (e) is more winnable than it looks, because the DSL's role in advising, supporting and training colleagues on safeguarding is a form of developing other staff's practice.

In practice the argument rarely gets that far, for a structural reason: KCSIE says the DSL should be a senior member of staff from the leadership team, and leadership group members cannot hold TLRs at all. STPCD paragraph 20.1 provides that a TLR may be awarded to a classroom teacher, and an assistant head is not one. So in most secondaries the DSL is already on the leadership pay range and the responsibility is, correctly, reflected in their leadership pay range rather than as a separate allowance. The question only becomes live where a school appoints a DSL who is not in the leadership group — which happens more often in primaries and in small schools than the guidance's wording suggests it should.

Deputy DSL: the strongest case in this guide

The deputy DSL is where the interesting argument lives, and it is the role most likely to be doing substantial unpaid work in a school right now.

KCSIE 2026 provides that "it is a matter for individual schools and colleges as to whether they choose to have one or more deputy designated safeguarding leads", that "any deputies should be trained to the same standard as the designated safeguarding lead", and that "the role should be explicit in their job description". It also provides that while the activities of the DSL can be delegated to appropriately trained deputies, the ultimate lead responsibility for child protection remains with the DSL and should not be delegated.

Three features of that make the TLR case unusually strong compared with most of the roles on this page:

• The deputy is very often a classroom teacher, not a leadership group member. Unlike the DSL, KCSIE imposes no requirement that a deputy comes from the leadership team. That removes the paragraph 20.1 obstacle entirely — a classroom teacher is exactly who TLRs are for.
• KCSIE itself requires the role to be explicit in the job description. The DfE's pay guidance says the responsibility for which a TLR is awarded should be clearly set out in the job description of the postholder. For a deputy DSL, a compliant school has already done that, for safeguarding reasons — which means the documentary basis for a TLR claim exists before anyone asks for one.
• The training standard is identical to the DSL's. Same training, same expected competence, and in many schools the same day-to-day caseload, since the DSL's activities can be delegated. A school that resources the DSL through a leadership salary and the deputy through nothing at all is drawing a line based on title rather than on job weight.
• Availability obligations attach to the deputy too. KCSIE requires that during term time the DSL 'or a deputy' should always be available during school hours for staff to discuss safeguarding concerns — a real, sustained constraint on a classroom teacher's working day.

Against the five-part test, the deputy DSL case is essentially the DSL case with the paragraph 20.1 obstacle removed. Limb (d) is straightforward. Limb (b) is straightforward. Limbs (a), (c) and (e) are arguable on the same reasoning as above, and the "leading and managing pupil development across the curriculum" route is the one to argue. A TLR2 is the realistic target; a TLR1 would need paragraph 20.5 line management, which a deputy DSL role does not usually carry.

Exams Officer: structurally outside the system

The exams officer question comes up constantly, and the answer is usually not the one people expect: in most schools the role cannot attract a TLR, and the reason has nothing to do with the five-part test.

STPCD paragraph 20.1 provides that the relevant body may award a TLR payment to a classroom teacher. In the overwhelming majority of English secondary schools, the exams officer is not a teacher. The role is a support staff post, employed on National Joint Council for Local Government Services terms — the "Green Book" — rather than on the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document. It is typically graded on an authority's or trust's own support staff scale, commonly around the Scale 6 to SO1 region, and it is a full professional specialism in its own right with its own national association and its own training and qualification routes.

The distinction is worth being precise about because the two roles are often conflated in staffing conversations. A school that asks a teacher to "be the exams officer" is doing one of two very different things: either it is asking a teacher to do a support staff job, in which case the grading question is whether the teacher is being properly paid for work outside their contract at all; or it is asking them to take on a teacher-facing assessment coordination role sitting alongside a professional exams officer, which is a genuine TLR2 candidate. Establishing which one is on the table is the first question to ask.

Duke of Edinburgh coordinator and enrichment leadership

Running the Duke of Edinburgh's Award in a school is a genuinely substantial job: licence compliance, expedition planning, assessor recruitment, participant records, safeguarding on residentials, and a great deal of weekend time. It is also, tested honestly against paragraph 20.4, one of the weaker candidates for an ongoing TLR1 or TLR2 — and understanding why is more useful than being told it should qualify.

Two strong limbs out of five, on a cumulative test, is a fail for TLR1 and TLR2. But notice what happens when you apply the TLR3 carve-out: with (c) and (e) disapplied, the role has to satisfy only (a), (b) and (d) — and (d) is comfortably met while (a) and (b) become genuinely arguable rather than hopeless. That is why enrichment coordination so often, and quite properly, appears as a fixed-term TLR3 rather than as an ongoing allowance.

There are two other mechanisms worth knowing about for this kind of work, because a TLR is not the only lawful way to pay for it. STPCD paragraph 26.1 permits the relevant body to make payments as it sees fit to a teacher, other than a headteacher, in respect of continuing professional development undertaken outside the school day, activities relating to initial teacher training, participation in out-of-school-hours learning activity agreed between the teacher and the headteacher, and additional responsibilities relating to raising educational standards in other schools. An expedition-heavy role that runs outside directed time can sit squarely within the third of those. Separately, a one-off, non-consolidated honorarium remains available for genuinely discrete pieces of work, though it carries no ongoing recognition if the work turns out to be permanent after all.

Educational Visits Coordinator

The EVC role scores similarly to DofE, and for similar reasons. It is a compliance and risk-management function: approving visit plans, checking risk assessments, liaising with the local authority or trust outdoor education adviser, and maintaining records. Limb (d) is satisfied easily. Limb (b) is arguable, since judging the adequacy of a risk assessment for an educational visit does draw on professional knowledge of pupils and of what a visit is educationally for. Limbs (a), (c) and (e) are all weak on a straightforward reading.

The honest conclusion is that a pure EVC role is a TLR3 or honorarium candidate rather than a TLR2 one. Where it becomes a genuine TLR2 candidate is when it is bundled with something curricular — an "outdoor and adventurous activities lead" role that includes curriculum responsibility for PE fieldwork, for instance — because the bundle can satisfy limb (c) in a way the compliance function alone cannot. This is worth knowing if you are negotiating: the route to a higher tier is usually to change the shape of the role rather than to argue harder about the same one.

Careers Leader

The Careers Leader role is an interesting contrast, because it is the one on this list whose statutory framing most closely mirrors the DSL's — and its TLR case is stronger.

The DfE's statutory careers guidance, updated in June 2026, requires every institution to appoint an appropriately trained Careers Leader to develop and direct the careers programme in line with the Gatsby Benchmarks, and expects the postholder to have the necessary skills, commitment and institutional support. Like KCSIE, it says nothing about pay.

Against paragraph 20.4, though, the role scores better than DofE or EVC. Limb (a) is satisfied, because careers education is part of the school's curriculum offer rather than adjacent to it. Limb (c) is satisfied on the "lead, manage and develop a subject or curriculum area" route where the school treats careers as a curriculum area, and on the "pupil development across the curriculum" route where it is delivered through other subjects — which is precisely what the Gatsby framework asks schools to do. Limb (d) is satisfied trivially. Limb (e) is genuinely arguable, since delivering careers through the curriculum requires the Careers Leader to develop subject teachers' capacity to do it.

Four or five limbs satisfied makes this an ordinary TLR2 candidate rather than a marginal one, and it is a useful comparator to hold in mind: if your school pays a TLR2 for careers leadership and nothing for a deputy DSL, the equal weight argument runs in one very obvious direction.

The roles that clearly pass

For contrast, it is worth spelling out what an unambiguous pass looks like, because it makes the marginal cases easier to judge.

• Head of Department or Faculty. Leads, manages and develops a subject area (c); affects the progress of every pupil taking the subject (d); develops the teaching practice of the department (e); plainly focused on teaching and learning (a) and requiring professional judgement (b). With line management of a significant number of teachers, paragraph 20.5 is satisfied too, making it the paradigm TLR1 role. See our head of department pay guide for what these posts actually pay in current adverts.
• Head of Year or Key Stage. Leads and manages pupil development across the curriculum (c) — this is the limb the pastoral route was written for; affects pupils well beyond your own classes (d); develops form tutors' practice (e). TLR1 or TLR2 depending on line management and scale.
• Whole-school literacy or numeracy lead. Leads a curriculum priority across every subject (c); impact on all pupils (d); explicitly developing other teachers' classroom practice (e). A textbook pass on all five limbs.
• SENCo. Distinctive because it has its own statutory framework and its own allowance route. A SENCo post can attract a TLR, and separately a teacher in a designated SEN post can receive the SEN allowance — see our SENCo pay guide for how the two interact.
• Second in Department. Usually a clean TLR2: satisfies (a) to (e) in a bounded part of the subject area, but without the line management breadth paragraph 20.5 requires for a TLR1.

The pattern across these is that every one of them touches the curriculum or pupil progress directly, and every one of them changes how other teachers teach. Those two features — limbs (c) and (e) — are what the framework is actually paying for. A role that has neither is not being undervalued by its school; it is being correctly identified as a different kind of work.

The equal pay problem schools routinely walk into

The statutory guidance accompanying the STPCD is blunt about the legal exposure created by informal TLR allocation, and it is worth quoting because most teachers have never seen it.

Paragraph 47 of the guidance provides that the responsibility or package of responsibilities for which a TLR1 or TLR2 is awarded "should be clearly set out in the job description of the post holder", and then states directly: "Equal pay legislation must be complied with in the award of any TLR to individual teachers and relevant bodies should be aware that any decisions which are not made on objective criteria may lead to claims being made to employment tribunals."

Paragraph 49 adds the substantive rule: relevant bodies "should determine the value of a TLR appropriate for the post, within the parameters laid down and in accordance with job weight. Posts of equal weight should be allocated equal value." The DfE's Managing Teachers' and Leaders' Pay guidance repeats it and adds the corollary — that "there should be sufficient differentiation between responsibilities and accountabilities for allowances of different values to avoid equal pay issues" — along with an explicit prompt that decisions must be made on objective criteria "so that there is no discriminatory effect on any teacher or group of teachers with a particular protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010".

Paragraph 49 also constrains when a TLR value may change once set. Changes "should only occur for two reasons: (a) the STRB recommends, and the Secretary of State accepts and introduces, a general change in the TLR values; or (b) the relevant body reviews its staffing structure and determines that the responsibilities of the post have changed materially". A school cannot quietly reduce an individual's TLR because the budget is tight while the job stays the same.

Recruitment difficulty is not a TLR factor

This is the rule most often broken, usually with good intentions, and it is unambiguous.

Paragraph 49 of the statutory guidance states that in determining TLR values, relevant bodies "should not take into account recruitment or retention issues". The framework's answer to a hard-to-staff subject is a completely separate mechanism: recruitment and retention incentives and benefits under STPCD paragraph 27, which permits the relevant body to make such payments or provide such financial assistance, support or benefits "as it considers to be necessary as an incentive for the recruitment of new teachers and the retention in their service of existing teachers".

And the guidance closes the loop from the other direction too. Paragraph 71 states that recruitment and retention incentives and benefits "must not be made for carrying out specific responsibilities". The two mechanisms are designed to be mutually exclusive: one pays for the job, the other pays for the market.

The practical significance for a teacher is this. If a school tells you it cannot increase your TLR because another department's head "had to be paid more to get anyone to apply", it has just described an unlawful basis for a TLR differential and pointed you at your own comparator. Equally, if a school offers you a larger TLR than an equivalent colleague because your subject is hard to staff, you should want that paid as a paragraph 27 retention payment instead — not because it pays better, but because a TLR differential that cannot be justified on job weight is unstable, and it is your colleague's tribunal claim rather than yours.

What to do if you disagree with your school's decision

A TLR conversation goes considerably better when it is framed as an application of published criteria rather than as a request for more money. The following sequence reflects what the framework actually entitles you to ask for.

• Get the pay policy. STPCD paragraph 2.1 requires every relevant body to adopt a pay policy setting out the basis on which it determines teachers' pay, and to have a grievance and appeals procedure. Ask for it in writing; it should list the school's TLR tiers and values.
• Get the job description. The guidance requires the responsibility for which a TLR is awarded to be set out in the job description. If yours does not exist, or does not describe what you actually do, that gap is itself the argument.
• Address the five limbs individually. Write a short paragraph against each of (a) to (e) with concrete evidence. For limb (d), name the pupils or year groups affected beyond your own classes. For limb (e), name the staff whose practice you have developed and how.
• Name an internal comparator. Identify a post in your own school's structure of comparable weight that is paid a TLR. 'Posts of equal weight should be allocated equal value' is the school's own guidance, not your opinion.
• Check whether the responsibility is genuinely ongoing or time-limited. If it has a real end date, a TLR3 is the correct instrument and is easier to obtain, because limbs (c) and (e) fall away. Do not argue for a TLR2 when a TLR3 would both succeed and be right.
• Ask when the staffing structure was last reviewed. Paragraph 49 permits TLR values to change where the relevant body reviews its staffing structure and finds responsibilities have materially changed. That review is the formal route to a re-tiering.
• Involve your union before it becomes adversarial, not after. A TLR question that raises equal pay issues affects colleagues as well as you, and unions are better placed than individuals to raise structural problems with a pay policy.

If the outcome is a TLR offer, our TLR calculator will show what a given amount is actually worth after income tax, National Insurance and Teachers' Pension contributions — which is usually rather less than the headline figure, and worth knowing before you decide whether the responsibility is worth taking on.