UK Teacher Pay — Scales, Pay Rises & TLR Explained

Teacher pay in the UK looks, on the surface, like a simple table of numbers you can look up in thirty seconds. In practice it's a layered system: a national framework that sets the rules, an annual review process that decides how much things go up, a base scale that different types of school can interpret differently, and a set of allowances and local variations that can shift what actually lands on a payslip by several thousand pounds a year compared to the headline number on a job advert. This page is the map. It explains how the whole system fits together, then links out to the detailed, nation-by-nation and topic-by-topic guides that cover the actual figures.

The STPCD: the rulebook for England and Wales

The School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) is the legal instrument that governs pay and working conditions for teachers in maintained schools in England and Wales. It's published annually by the Department for Education, following the pay round described below, and it sets out far more than just salary numbers — it defines the structure of the pay ranges themselves, the rules for progression, the conditions under which allowances like TLRs can be awarded, and statutory entitlements such as Planning, Preparation and Assessment (PPA) time.

Crucially, the STPCD is legally binding on maintained schools — those still under local authority control — but not on academies, which employ staff under their own contracts of employment. This single fact explains most of the pay variation you'll see advertised between two otherwise similar schools in the same town, and it's covered in more detail below.

The STRB: who actually decides the pay rise

The annual pay award doesn't appear from nowhere. It's the product of a formal review carried out by the School Teachers' Review Body (STRB), an independent body that gathers evidence from the Department for Education, teaching unions, school leaders, and its own analysis of the labour market, then publishes a report recommending a pay award for the following academic year.

The STRB's recommendation is exactly that — a recommendation. The Secretary of State for Education has to accept it, partially accept it, or reject it before it becomes the actual, legally binding uplift applied to the STPCD scales. In most recent years the government has accepted the STRB's headline figure in full or close to it, but it isn't guaranteed, and the gap between the STRB publishing its report and the government's formal response — followed by schools actually implementing the new pay scales, often backdated to September — can stretch out for months. This is exactly why the timeline matters as much as the eventual number: teachers can be working under an unconfirmed pay award for a significant chunk of the school year. Our STRB tracker follows this year's process from evidence submission through to confirmed implementation.

How the pay ranges are structured

The STPCD defines four main pay ranges that between them cover the overwhelming majority of teaching roles in England and Wales. Each is a band of scale points rather than a single figure, and where a teacher sits within the band depends on experience, responsibility and, for the upper bands, a formal application process.

See our full pay scales guide for the actual, current scale point figures across all four ranges.

Main Pay Range progression: less automatic than most teachers assume

A widely held assumption is that moving up the Main Pay Range each year is simply a matter of time served — put in a year, move up a point. Structurally, that's not quite how the STPCD works. Progression is meant to be tied to performance against a teacher's appraisal objectives, assessed annually, with the headteacher making the final recommendation to the governing body (or equivalent) on whether an increment is awarded.

In practice, the substantial majority of teachers who are meeting the expectations of their role do progress each year without incident. But it is a real decision point, not a formality, and a school facing budget pressure or with documented performance concerns is entitled to withhold progression. Teachers are often surprised to learn this only when it happens to them or a colleague, which is exactly why it's worth understanding the mechanism in advance rather than assuming pay progression is guaranteed.

Threshold assessment: crossing onto the Upper Pay Range

Moving from the top of the Main Pay Range (M6) onto the Upper Pay Range is a distinct, formal process usually called "threshold assessment" or "UPR application". It is not an automatic next step after reaching M6, and isn't purely about years of service either. A teacher applies, typically once a year, submitting evidence that they consistently meet the relevant Teachers' Standards and are making a substantial and sustained contribution to the school beyond their own classroom — mentoring, curriculum leadership, or similar. The headteacher and governing body assess the application and confirm (or decline) the move.

Because it requires an active application, a meaningful number of teachers who would qualify never actually put themselves forward, either because they aren't aware of the process, assume it's automatic, or simply never get round to compiling the evidence. If you're on M6, it's worth actively asking your school about their threshold assessment window rather than waiting to be invited.

TLRs, SEN allowances and Recruitment and Retention Allowances

On top of the base scale, the STPCD allows schools to pay a range of additional, role-specific allowances. These sit on top of — not instead of — a teacher's scale point salary, and are fully taxable and pensionable in exactly the same way as base pay.

• Teaching and Learning Responsibility (TLR) payments. Paid for a defined additional responsibility beyond classroom teaching — leading a subject or year group, for example. TLR1 is the highest value, for the most substantial whole-school responsibilities; TLR2 covers a wide range of significant but narrower responsibilities; TLR3 is a smaller, time-limited payment for a specific fixed-term project. See our TLR payments guide and TLR calculator for exactly how much of a TLR you actually keep after tax, National Insurance and pension contributions.
• SEN allowances. Paid to teachers working mainly or wholly with pupils with special educational needs in designated SEN posts, recognising the additional skills and demands the role requires.
• Recruitment and Retention Allowances (RRAs). A discretionary allowance a school can offer to attract or keep a teacher in a hard-to-fill post or subject, or in an area with a high cost of living or particularly acute recruitment pressure. Unlike TLRs and SEN allowances, RRAs are entirely at a school's discretion and vary enormously in whether they're offered at all.

Academies and the STPCD: legally free to diverge, but usually don't stray far

This is one of the most misunderstood parts of the whole system. Maintained schools are legally required to apply the STPCD. Academies are not — their staff are employed under contracts set by the academy trust itself, which gives trusts the legal freedom to design their own pay structure entirely, from scratch if they choose to.

In reality, most academy trusts choose to mirror the STPCD scales closely, often adopting them wholesale or using them as a minimum floor, because departing significantly from the national scale makes recruitment harder, can trigger union disputes, and creates administrative complexity when staff move between a maintained school and an academy. But "usually mirrors" is not the same as "legally must mirror" — some large multi-academy trusts (MATs) have introduced their own pay spines with different point structures, moved their pay award implementation date away from September, or restructured TLR points differently from the STPCD model. If you're moving to, or already work for, an academy trust, it's worth checking the trust's own pay policy directly rather than assuming the STPCD figures apply automatically.

London weighting

Schools in and around London pay an additional allowance on top of the national pay scale, split into three geographic zones that can make a genuinely large difference to take-home pay for what is nominally "the same" job:

Because the boundaries are defined by specific postcode and local authority lists rather than a simple radius from central London, two schools that look close together on a map can sometimes fall into different weighting zones — always confirm which zone a specific school falls into rather than assuming based on general area.

Scotland and Northern Ireland: separate systems, not just separate numbers

It's tempting to think of Scotland and Northern Ireland as simply running "the same system with different figures", but both have genuinely distinct negotiating structures and, in places, differently structured scales.

Scotland is covered by the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers (SNCT), which agrees pay and conditions independently of the STPCD process entirely. Scottish teachers are also taxed under a separate Scottish Income Tax system with five bands rather than the three used in the rest of the UK, which affects take-home pay independently of the salary scale itself. See our Scotland teacher pay guide.

Northern Ireland uses income tax bands identical to England and Wales, but has its own pay scale set by the Department of Education Northern Ireland (DE NI), agreed through Northern Ireland's own teachers' negotiating machinery rather than the STRB. Pay awards in Northern Ireland have, in some recent pay rounds, been confirmed later than — and at times worth less than — the equivalent England & Wales award, a genuine source of frustration highlighted repeatedly by Northern Ireland's teaching unions. See our Northern Ireland teacher pay guide.

Explore the pay cluster

The five guides below cover the detailed, current-year figures and processes referenced throughout this page.