How Much Do Teachers Get Paid in Northern Ireland? £32,916 to £50,876 (2026/27)

What changed on this page

The determination, and why its date matters as much as its figures

Teacher pay in Northern Ireland is not set by a review body making recommendations to a minister, as in England, and it is not the output of a standing negotiating machinery with its own published handbook, as in Scotland. It is a Determination: a legal instrument made by the Department of Education in exercise of powers under Article 69(1) and (6) of the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986, following negotiations with the teachers' unions, specifying "the salaries and allowances to be paid to teachers in grant-aided schools". Until that determination is made, the previous determination remains the law, regardless of what has been agreed in principle around a negotiating table.

That distinction matters enormously in practice, and it is the reason this page is careful to give you two dates for every figure rather than one. The current determination has an effective date of 1 September 2025 and an issue date of 13 January 2026. For four months and twelve days of the 2025/26 school year, every teacher in Northern Ireland was being paid under the previous determination while the new one existed only as an accepted offer. The pay they were legally entitled to on 1 October 2025 was last year's pay; the pay they were retrospectively entitled to, once 13 January 2026 arrived, was this year's.

The award itself was a 4% consolidated increase to all teacher salary scale points, with Teaching Allowances and Special Needs Allowances also increased by 4% from the same date. It was accepted by the Northern Ireland Teachers' Council on 13 January 2026 — the same day the circular issued — following a Ministerial Direction from the Education Minister. Every figure in the tables below is the post-4% figure.

Main Pay Scale: M2 to M6, with no M1

The Northern Ireland Main Pay Scale has five points, numbered M2 to M6. The absence of an M1 is not a typographical quirk and it is not an omission on our part: the bottom point of the scale was deleted, and teachers who were sitting on it were assimilated upwards onto M2. That change came through the settlement covering 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24, which the Teachers' Negotiating Committee formally accepted on 9 April 2024 and which delivered a cumulative 10.4% plus £1,000 consolidated, alongside the structural change of removing the bottom point and adding a point at the top.

Wales made structurally the same move — its main range also runs five points starting at M2 — which means that of the four UK nations, only England still has a six-point main scale beginning at M1. The practical effect of deleting a bottom point is that it raises the profession's entry salary without costing anything at the top, which is why it is a recurring feature of settlements designed to improve recruitment. The equally practical side-effect is that it shortens the scale, so a Northern Ireland teacher reaches the top of the main scale in four annual steps rather than five.

Progression up the main scale in Northern Ireland is service-based rather than performance-based, and the threshold for earning a point is set generously. A teacher is entitled to one point for each school year in which they completed periods of employment as a teacher amounting to at least twenty-six weeks in aggregate, including part-time service, unless the relevant body concludes the previous year's service was unsatisfactory. The twenty-six weeks need not be consecutive and need not all be served at the same school; holiday, maternity and sick leave periods count as service. Critically, the rule applies to part-time teachers on the same terms as full-time teachers — a teacher working two days a week accrues an experience point at exactly the same rate as a full-timer, because the test is weeks of employment, not hours worked.

Withholding an experience point is possible but is treated as a serious step. It has to be considered within the formal procedure for dealing with teachers whose work is unsatisfactory, or the disciplinary procedure; the teacher must be warned in advance that it is being considered; and the reason must be given in writing. There is also an administrative wrinkle worth knowing: the Department of Education's payroll system awards the point automatically unless it is notified of a decision to withhold, so a point withheld without notification will still be paid.

Upper Pay Scale, and the threshold the principal decides

Teachers at the top of the main scale can apply to cross the threshold onto a three-point Upper Pay Scale.

The gateway is Threshold Assessment against the Northern Ireland Threshold Standards, and the assessing authority is unusually concentrated: eligible teachers who apply are assessed on the exercise of the professional judgement of the principal against those standards, taking into account the outcome of two Performance Review and Staff Development (PRSD) statements. It remains a matter for each teacher whether to apply at all, and those who choose not to are asked to tell the principal in writing. Where an application succeeds, the board of governors must move the teacher onto UPS 1 from the following September.

Progression beyond UPS 1 is slower than England's. Movement through the Upper Pay Scale can only occur at two-yearly intervals, requires a PRSD review, and requires that the teacher's achievements and contribution have been "substantial and sustained". Salary cannot be increased by more than one scale point at a time, and any point awarded is permanent whether the teacher stays in post or moves. So the fastest possible route from UPS 1 to UPS 3 is four years.

Three categories of teacher are treated as post-threshold without going through the Northern Ireland assessment at all: anyone who passed the performance threshold under the arrangements approved by the Secretary of State in England and Wales; anyone who was at any time employed as a principal or vice-principal (and, if appointed since 1 September 2000, held the post for an aggregate year or more); and anyone previously employed by a local education authority as an education adviser on the Soulbury spine for at least a year. That first category is genuinely useful for teachers moving from England to Northern Ireland: an English threshold pass transfers. A Further Education threshold does not — FE threshold is explicitly not recognised in the schools sector, and does not entitle a former lecturer to Upper Pay Scale placement.

How much back pay will you get?

When the 2026/27 award is agreed it is expected to be backdated to 1 September 2026. Pick your pay point and an assumed award to see your new salary and the back pay owed so far.

The 43-point leadership spine England abolished and Northern Ireland kept

This is the part of the Northern Ireland system that most surprises people reading across from England. England abolished its numbered leadership spine in 2014, replacing it with broad statutory ranges within which schools set individual pay. Northern Ireland kept the spine in full — all 43 numbered points, each with a single national cash value, exactly as the pre-2014 England and Wales system had it. Wales also kept its spine, so on this particular question it is England that is the outlier rather than the devolved nations.

Every principal and vice-principal in a grant-aided school in Northern Ireland is paid on one of these 43 points. Not on a figure chosen from within a range: on a numbered point with a national value.

A few features of the spine are worth drawing out. The steps are not uniform: the gap from L1 to L2 is £1,270, while the gap from L42 to L43 is £3,471 — the spine widens as it rises, so a point is worth progressively more the further up you are. The whole spine spans £91,588 from bottom to top, which is a little under three times the L1 salary.

Because the spine is numbered, a Northern Ireland leadership salary is genuinely comparable between schools in a way an English one is not. Two principals on L24 are on the same salary. Two English headteachers "in Group 5" may be tens of thousands of pounds apart, because Group 5 in England is a cash range within which the governing body chooses. This makes Northern Ireland leadership pay far more transparent, and it makes pay negotiation at appointment a narrower conversation: you are arguing about which numbered point, not about a figure.

The eight principal groups, mapped to named spine points

Like England, Northern Ireland assigns each school to one of eight groups. Unlike England, the group does not give the school a cash range — it gives the school a range of spine points, and the cash follows automatically from the spine.

The group itself is determined by formula, not by judgement. A school is assigned to a group on the basis of a unit score calculated by reference to the number of pupils at each key stage on the most recent Annual School Census Statistical Return, with modified arrangements for special schools. The employing authorities recalculate the group for every school every three years and also provide recommended ranges; a board of governors must recalculate on the appointment of a new principal and should review whenever school circumstances change.

Within its group range, the board of governors then sets a seven-point Individual School Range (ISR), and the principal's salary must sit inside that ISR. Note the overlap in the table above: Group 1 runs L6-L18 and Group 2 runs L8-L21, so the same spine point can belong to two different groups. This overlap is deliberate and it is what gives boards of governors room to reflect the specific demands of a post without breaking the formulaic group assignment.

Some further rules constrain how that discretion is used, and they are unusually explicit. A new principal should normally be paid on the base point of the ISR, and can be paid at a point not exceeding the third point above the ISR minimum. The maximum point of the ISR is the highest salary attainable by that principal — and simply reaching the maximum is expressly stated not to be a justification for re-setting the ISR to allow further progression. Where a school is genuinely in difficulty and cannot recruit or retain, a board of governors may set an ISR up to two groups above the school's own principal group, but only in extremely exceptional circumstances with clear evidence, after consulting the employing authority.

Vice-principals: a five-point range, sandwiched by rule

Northern Ireland handles vice-principal pay with a specific and rather elegant piece of machinery. The board of governors must determine a five-point pay range for each vice-principal, and that range must sit in the gap between two other figures: it must start on a point above the "highest paid classroom teacher's salary", and it must not overlap with the principal's ISR.

The "highest paid classroom teacher's salary" is a notional construct rather than an actual person's pay: it is defined as UPS 1 plus any Teaching Allowance or Special Educational Needs Allowance held by the highest paid classroom teacher in the school. Recruitment and retention payments must be excluded from that calculation. Defining the floor notionally rather than by reference to a real individual stops a school from inflating one teacher's pay in order to lever the vice-principal range upwards, and the rules say so expressly: a relevant body must not increase the highest paid teacher's salary, or the vice-principal's range, for the purpose of increasing the principal's pay.

A new vice-principal should normally be appointed to the minimum point of the range, and cannot be appointed more than two points above that minimum — a tighter constraint than the three points allowed for a new principal. Where a board re-determines a range at a level below the serving vice-principal's existing point, the vice-principal continues to be paid at that point until the range catches up. And, as with principals, reaching the maximum of an existing range is not in itself a justification for re-setting it.

One further point that matters at appointment: only vice-principals can be required to act up in the principal's absence. That is a genuine additional duty attaching to the post, and it is part of why the leadership group is defined as narrowly as it is in Northern Ireland — the leadership group consists of principals and vice-principals, not of a broader senior leadership tier in the English sense.

No TLRs at all: five fixed Teaching Allowances instead

The right-hand column is offered as orientation only, and it deserves a caveat: the Northern Ireland values are the September 2025 determination and the England values are the September 2026 STPCD, so the comparison is a year out of alignment. It is included because the first question an English teacher asks about a Teaching Allowance is "what is that in TLR terms", and the honest answer is that the five Northern Ireland values are spread across the territory England covers with two overlapping bands.

A school may award only one Teaching Allowance to a classroom teacher. It is not possible to award more than one to recognise different areas of responsibility, which is a sharper rule than England's — an English teacher can hold a TLR3 concurrently with a TLR1 or TLR2. Where a Northern Ireland teacher already holding a TA takes on further responsibility, the school's only option is to award a higher-value TA in place of the existing one. Allowances can be split between full-time and part-time teachers provided the full value of the allowance is used and not exceeded, and a part-time teacher may hold either a full TA (if the governors are satisfied the duties can be fully discharged within their hours) or a pro rata share.

The criteria for awarding one are close to England's TLR criteria in substance. Before awarding, the board of governors must be satisfied that the duties include responsibilities that are not required of all classroom teachers, are focused primarily on teaching and learning, and require the exercise of a teacher's professional skills and judgement. The responsibilities must also meet at least one of three further descriptions: leading, managing and developing a subject or curriculum area (or leading pupil development across the curriculum); having an impact on the educational progress of pupils other than those normally assigned to the teacher; or leading, developing and enhancing the teaching practice of other staff. As a general principle, TA4 and TA5 should normally involve line management responsibility for a significant number of people.

Because this mechanism is genuinely different from England's rather than merely differently priced, we have given it a page of its own: see NI Teaching Allowances explained for how schools decide which responsibility maps to which fixed level, what happens when a role sits between two values, and what an English teacher's TLR is worth when they cross the Irish Sea.

Recruitment and retention, and special educational needs

The same fixed-value philosophy runs through the other two allowance families. England sets both as ranges; Northern Ireland sets both as specific sums.

A recruitment and retention allowance may be awarded to a teacher employed "to teach subjects in which there is a shortage of teachers" or "in a post which is difficult to fill". It is for the board of governors to judge whether a teacher meets either criterion and, if so, which of the two levels to award — and the award may be reviewed every two years, with the school required to consider whether its circumstances have changed since the allowance was last granted. That two-year review is a real risk to be aware of: an R&R allowance in Northern Ireland is explicitly not a permanent addition to salary in the way a Teaching Allowance effectively is.

The SEN allowances split into a mandatory tier and a discretionary one. SEN 1 must be awarded to a teacher in a special school, or a teacher in a mainstream school engaged wholly or mainly in teaching pupils with statements of special educational needs, whether in designated special classes or otherwise. It must also be awarded to teachers engaged wholly or mainly in taking charge of special classes consisting wholly or mainly of children who are hearing or visually impaired, even where those children do not have statements. SEN 2 may be awarded instead of SEN 1 where the board considers that the teacher's experience or qualifications enhance the value of the work — the drafting explicitly encourages boards to use it to recognise specialist expertise beyond hearing and visual impairment, not only within it.

One small but real figure that exists in the determination and almost nowhere else: teachers employed in "Homework Centres" under Regulation 15(5) of the Teachers' Salaries Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1993 are paid at an hourly rate of £25.94. We mention it because it is the only hourly rate in the whole determination and it is routinely missed.

Progression: nothing on the leadership spine is automatic

The rule here is short, strict, and worth quoting closely because it is frequently misremembered. There is no automatic salary progression on the leadership spine. Decisions on pay progression must be taken in association with the outcome of the annual review of performance. A board of governors may award one point for performance of sustained high quality, and in cases where there has been very high quality of performance, one additional point may be awarded. No more than two points can be awarded in the course of a single annual review.

Outside that rule, there is no movement up the spine at all — with one exception: movement necessary to ensure that a principal's or vice-principal's salary is not less than the minimum of their ISR or VP Range. So if a board re-sets a range upwards and the postholder now sits below the new minimum, they move up to that minimum regardless of the two-point cap.

For classroom teachers the picture is different again: main scale movement is the twenty-six-week experience point described above, and Upper Pay Scale movement is one point at a two-yearly interval on the principal's professional judgement. So Northern Ireland runs three genuinely different progression mechanisms in one system — service-based on the main scale, biennial performance-based on the upper scale, and annual capped performance-based on the leadership spine.

Why Northern Ireland pay decisions arrive late — and why that is structural

The earlier version of this page used the lateness of Northern Ireland settlements as a reason not to publish figures. That was the wrong conclusion drawn from a correct observation. The observation stands: Northern Ireland pay determinations do arrive materially later than their effective dates, they do so repeatedly, and the reasons are structural rather than accidental.

Look at the pattern in the Department of Education's own list of pay circulars, which is the cleanest available evidence because each circular carries both an effective date and an issue date:

Three circulars issued in a single year, 2024, covering pay effective in 2021, 2022 and 2023, is the clearest illustration available of what the delay actually looks like. Those three awards were settled together: the Teachers' Negotiating Committee formally accepted the management side's offer for 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 at a meeting on 9 April 2024, a cumulative 10.4% plus £1,000 consolidated, together with the removal of the bottom main scale point and the £30,000 starting salary commitment. A teacher owed a 2021 award received it in 2024.

The mechanism behind this is not that anybody is being obstructive. It is that a determination requires the Department of Education to be able to fund it, which in turn requires budget cover flowing from the Northern Ireland Executive's overall budget. During the periods when the Assembly and Executive were not sitting — and Stormont was suspended for substantial stretches between 2017 and 2020, and again between 2022 and early 2024 — there was no minister to take the decision and no agreed budget to fund it. A negotiation can conclude in principle while the instrument that makes it law waits on the wider machinery of devolved government. The 2025/26 settlement's four-and-a-half-month lag is, by the standards of the preceding decade, fast.

There is one genuine mitigation and one genuine cost. The mitigation is that awards are backdated to the intended effective date, so nothing is lost in cash terms. The cost is threefold: you are lending the employer money interest-free for however long the delay runs; the arrears arrive as a single lump in one pay period, where PAYE and National Insurance are calculated on that month's inflated gross even though the annual position generally evens out; and — the one people rarely think about — any affordability assessment done in the meantime, for a mortgage or a car finance agreement, uses your old salary, because that is what your payslips show.

Is there a 2026/27 Northern Ireland scale yet?

No. As at 18 September 2026, the Department of Education's pay circulars page lists DE Circular 2026/07 — covering pay from 1 September 2025 — as the most recent teachers' pay and allowances determination. No circular covering pay from 1 September 2026 has been published, and the Department's teachers' pay agreement pages carry nothing for 2026/27.

That means the figures on this page are simultaneously the previous academic year's award and the current legal position. Both statements are true at once, and the distinction is the whole reason this page exists in its rewritten form. A Northern Ireland teacher reading this in September 2026 is being paid the September 2025 rates, because no instrument has changed them.

On the pattern above, a determination for September 2026 is more likely to arrive during the 2026/27 academic year than before it started, and when it does it would normally be backdated to 1 September 2026. We will not publish a projected 2026/27 figure here, and we would treat with suspicion any site that does: there is no review-body recommendation to extrapolate from in Northern Ireland, because Northern Ireland does not have a review body. There is a negotiation, and then there is a determination, and until the second of those happens there is no number.

Northern Ireland against England and Wales, honestly

The table below compares like with like on structure, and compares the currently-in-force scale in each nation on cash. Because Northern Ireland's currently-in-force scale dates from September 2025 and England's and Wales's date from September 2026, the cash comparison flatters the other two nations by one pay round. That is a real difference in what teachers are being paid today; it is not a permanent structural gap of that size.

The single most interesting line in that table is the fourth from the bottom but one. Northern Ireland is the most prescriptive of the three systems on responsibility pay and the most prescriptive on leadership pay — spine points rather than ranges, fixed allowances rather than bands — which cuts directly against the intuition that a smaller jurisdiction would have a looser framework. In practice Northern Ireland has written more of the answer into the determination and left less to local judgement than either of the larger systems.

Pensions: NITPS, not the England and Wales TPS

One NITPS-specific point worth knowing in the context of this page: because pay awards arrive late and are paid as arrears, your pensionable pay for a given year can be reported and contributed on in a different year from the one it was earned in. When a large arrears payment lands, check that your contributions have been recalculated across the months the arrears covered rather than treated wholly as pay for the month of payment — it matters for career-average accrual and it matters for Annual Allowance testing in a year where a multi-year settlement lands all at once.

Income tax: identical to England, unlike Scotland

This is the one area where a Northern Ireland teacher can use this site's tools without any caveat. Northern Ireland uses the same rest-of-UK income tax bands as England — the same Personal Allowance, the same basic, higher and additional rate thresholds. There is no separate Northern Ireland income tax in the way there is a separate Scottish income tax with its own six bands. National Insurance and student loan repayment rules are set UK-wide and apply identically.

Selecting Northern Ireland on our take-home pay calculator applies the correct rest-of-UK bands. That part of the calculation is entirely unaffected by the NITPS caveat above, which relates only to the dedicated pension tools.

Sources, and what we could not verify

Every salary and allowance figure on this page is taken from the text of the Determination issued with DE Circular 2026/07, "Teachers' Pay and Allowances from 1 September 2025", issued by the Department of Education on 13 January 2026 under Article 69(1) and (6) of the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986. The structural rules on principal groups, Individual School Ranges, vice-principal ranges, leadership progression, main scale experience points, threshold assessment and the criteria for awarding Teaching, recruitment and retention and SEN allowances come from the employing authorities' guidance to boards of governors on the formulation and implementation of a salary policy. England's comparison figures are the STPCD values for 1 September 2026 held in this site's own pay data; Wales's are from our Wales pay scales guide.

Primary sources: DE Circular 2026/07 — Teachers' Pay and Allowances from 1 September 2025; Department of Education (NI), Pay Circulars; Teachers' Pay Agreement 2025/26, Department of Education (NI); Teachers' Pay Agreement 2021–23, Department of Education (NI); Overview of teachers' terms and conditions, Department of Education (NI); Guidance for Boards of Governors on the Formulation and Implementation of a Salary Policy; Teachers' Pay Scales (Northern Ireland), INTO; Pay Scales (Northern Ireland), NASUWT.

What we could not verify. Four things. First, the precise issue dates of DE Circulars 2021/10, 2021/11, 2024/04, 2024/05, 2024/06 and 2025/05: the Department's index gives the circular year and the pay effective date, so the lag column in the timing table above is calculated from circular numbering rather than from a stated issue date on each document, and is expressed as an approximation for that reason. Only the 13 January 2026 date for 2026/07 is taken from the face of the circular itself. Second, whether a 2026/27 determination is in negotiation and at what stage — the Department has published nothing, and we have not inferred anything from union commentary. Third, the current NITPS contribution tier boundaries, which are set separately from England and Wales and which we have deliberately not stated from TPS figures. Fourth, the detailed unit-score thresholds that place a school in each principal group: the formula is set out in the employing authorities' guidance appendices rather than in the determination, and we have described how it works without reproducing the score bands. On all four, check with the Department of Education or your union branch.