Wales Teacher Pay Scales 2026/27 (STPC(W)D) Explained

If you have ever seen a teacher pay table headed "England & Wales", you have seen something that was accurate until 2018 and has been quietly wrong ever since. The phrase has survived in job adverts, union summaries, mortgage affordability tools and general finance sites long after the thing it describes stopped existing. Wales now runs a genuinely separate pay system: a separate review body, a separate statutory document, a separate annual timetable, a differently shaped scale, and — as of 2026/27 — different cash figures at every single point on that scale.

This guide sets out what Wales's system actually is, what the confirmed 2026/27 figures are, why the Welsh Government's award landed below its own pay review body's recommendation for the second year running, and — importantly — which parts of a Welsh teacher's finances are still identical to an English teacher's, because over-correcting here is as misleading as the original error.

Why Wales has its own pay document

Until 2018, teachers in England and Wales genuinely were covered by one document: the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD), made by the UK Secretary of State for Education on the recommendation of the School Teachers' Review Body (STRB). A Welsh teacher and an English teacher on M4 were on the same number, from the same legal instrument, decided by the same process.

That ended on 30 September 2018, when responsibility for setting teachers' and leaders' pay and conditions in Wales transferred to the Welsh Ministers under the Welsh Ministers (Transfer of Functions) Order 2018, implementing a devolution settlement that had been signalled since 2017. From that point the STPCD ceased to apply in Wales, and the Welsh Government began making its own statutory document — the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (Wales) Document, usually written STPC(W)D — with the first fully Welsh document taking effect from September 2019.

Alongside the document, Wales created its own standing advisory machinery. The Independent Welsh Pay Review Body (IWPRB) receives an annual remit letter from the Cabinet Secretary for Education, gathers written and oral evidence from teaching unions, employers, local authorities and the Welsh Government itself, and reports with recommendations on pay and allowances. Its seventh such report was published in July 2026.

The Welsh system also has a policy identity of its own, not just a separate address. The IWPRB's own summary of what has changed since devolution is a useful shorthand for how far the two documents have drifted apart: national pay scales have been restored, the main pay range has been shortened so that teachers reach the top of the scale more quickly, the definitions of TLR payments have been clarified and expanded, and pay portability has been reintroduced. Each of those is a deliberate divergence from the direction England's STPCD took after 2013, when automatic progression was removed and pay portability was dropped.

One structural point is easy to miss and worth stating explicitly: Wales has no academies. The single biggest caveat attached to every English pay scale table — that academy trusts are not legally bound by the national document and may set their own pay points — simply does not arise in Wales. Welsh maintained schools are bound by the STPC(W)D, which makes the Welsh figures a more reliable description of what teachers are actually paid than the English ones are.

The IWPRB vs England's STRB

The IWPRB and the STRB look similar on paper — both are independent bodies that take evidence and recommend a pay award to a government minister who then decides what to do with it — and that similarity is real. Wales did not copy Scotland's negotiating model (the SNCT, where union and employer sides bargain directly toward an agreed settlement) or Northern Ireland's. It built a review body on broadly the STRB template.

The differences that matter are about scale, scope and accountability rather than mechanism:

• Who it reports to. The IWPRB reports to the Cabinet Secretary for Education in the Welsh Government, and its recommendations are implemented (or not) through a Welsh statutory instrument laid before the Senedd. The STRB reports to the UK Secretary of State for Education. Neither has any role in the other's process.
• What it is asked to look at. Welsh remit letters have repeatedly gone beyond the annual percentage to structural questions — the shape of the pay ranges, pay portability, the treatment of ALNCos, the availability of a Welsh-medium teaching workforce — and the IWPRB has produced a full strategic review of the structure of teachers' and leaders' pay and conditions in Wales alongside its annual reports. The Welsh-medium workforce question in particular has no English equivalent at all.
• Timetable. The two processes run on their own calendars. In 2026 the STRB's 36th Report was accepted in full by the UK Government on 1 July; the IWPRB's Seventh Report was published with the Welsh Government's response on 13 July, Wales consulted on the resulting document into the autumn, and the award was confirmed on 14 October. Both nations uprate from 1 September, but the confirmation points do not line up, and in some years they have been weeks or months apart.
• Willingness to depart from the recommendation. This is the live difference for 2026/27, and it gets its own section below. The UK Government accepted the STRB's 2026 recommendation in full. The Welsh Government did not accept the IWPRB's.

The 2026/27 award: 4.25% recommended, 3.5% confirmed

The IWPRB's Seventh Report contains five recommendations. The first is the pay award, and it is unambiguous: the IWPRB recommended to the Welsh Government that all salaries and allowances be increased by 4.25% from September 2026.

In the Written Statement published on 13 July 2026 alongside the report, the Cabinet Secretary for Education did not implement that. The statement instead announced a consultation, from the start of the autumn term, on a 3.5% award for teachers and school leaders, with a larger 5% increase for unqualified teachers. The reasoning given was affordability: the IWPRB's recommendation was not affordable within existing budgets, and the Cabinet Secretary pointed to the difficult financial circumstances facing schools and colleges and the implications that an unfunded pay award would have for school budgets and staff numbers. Additional funding was committed to local authorities and schools for the award that was offered.

The Welsh Government confirmed that position in a further Written Statement on 14 October 2026: 3.5% for teachers and school leaders, 5% on the unqualified range and 3.5% for FE lecturers, backdated to 1 September 2026 and matching England's award under its no-detriment principle. It said employers decide when to pay, urged them to pass on the back pay as soon as possible, and said the revised STPC(W)D would follow the next week. The IWPRB has been asked to start work on 2027/28 earlier than last year.

The gap is 0.75 percentage points. On the top of the Welsh main pay range that is a difference of roughly £350 a year in gross pay; across the leadership spine it is worth considerably more. But the significance is as much institutional as financial, and it is not a one-off.

It is worth being precise about what this does and does not mean for a Welsh teacher's actual pay packet. Wales went below its own recommendation; England accepted the STRB's in full. Yet both nations landed on a 3.5% headline for classroom teachers and leaders for September 2026. The two systems arrived at the same percentage by completely different routes — and, because the underlying scales had already diverged in cash terms over several separate settlements, the same percentage produces different pounds. As the comparison section below shows, Welsh teachers remain better paid than English teachers outside London at every equivalent point on the scale, despite the award having come in below what the IWPRB asked for.

There is one further wrinkle in the 5% figure. In England, the 5% element of the 2026 award applied only to the minimum of the unqualified teacher range outside London, with the rest of that range moving by 3.5% like everything else. In Wales, the published 2026/27 unqualified scale shows 5% applied across the whole range, from point 1 to point 6. That is a small, specific, and easily missed divergence that matters to instructors, trainees on employment-based routes, and overseas-trained teachers working towards QTS.

Wales pay scales 2026/27 in full

Each table shows the confirmed September 2025 STPC(W)D point alongside the September 2026 figure following the 3.5% award (5% for the unqualified range). There is no regional weighting in Wales — one national figure applies from Anglesey to Monmouthshire, with no equivalent of England's Inner London, Outer London or Fringe bands.

Main pay range (M2–M6)

The Welsh main pay range has five points, and it starts at M2. This is not a typographical oddity: Wales shortened the range after devolution so that teachers reach the top of the classroom scale faster, and kept the existing point labels rather than renumbering, which is why M1 no longer appears. A newly qualified teacher in Wales starts on M2 and reaches M6 after four increments. In England, an ECT starts on M1 and needs five.

Upper pay range (U1–U3)

Unlike England, this is no longer reached through a threshold application. The STPC(W)D's summary of changes removed the application requirement, and paragraph 15.1 now states that qualified teachers move from the main pay scale to the upper pay scale automatically after completing a year of employment on M6, unless they've been notified that capability procedures are underway — the same "assumption in favour of progression" logic that applies to leadership pay (see below). It still has three points once you're on it.

Unqualified teacher pay range

Six points, applying to staff teaching without QTS — instructors appointed where a qualified teacher is not available, some overseas-trained teachers, and staff working towards QTS through an employment-based route. Note the 5% uplift running across the whole range rather than only the minimum.

How much back pay are you owed?

The award is backdated to 1 September 2026, so every month you are paid at the old rate is owed to you. Pick your point and the month your payroll will pay it.

Allowances: TLRs and the ALN allowance

Wales retains the same three-band TLR structure as England — TLR1 for substantial sustained responsibility, TLR2 for a narrower defined responsibility, TLR3 as a fixed-term payment for a time-limited project — with its own cash ranges, all of which currently sit slightly above England's. Like England's, the Welsh allowance ranges carry no regional variation.

The one naming difference worth knowing is the allowance for teachers in designated additional-needs posts. England calls it the SEN allowance; Wales calls it the ALN allowance, reflecting Wales's own Additional Learning Needs legislative framework, which replaced the SEN system in Wales entirely. It is the same idea — an annual allowance on top of the base point for teachers in designated posts — but you will not find the letters "SEN" in a Welsh pay document, and a Welsh pay policy or job advert that says "ALN allowance" is not describing something exotic.

A separate, Wales-only change is worth flagging for anyone in or considering an additional learning needs coordinator role. Following a consultation, the Cabinet Secretary confirmed in a Written Statement on 4 February 2026 an intention to revise the STPC(W)D so that ALNCos move onto the leadership pay scale, with backdated pay to 1 September 2025. That is a structural recognition of the ALNCo role that has no direct English equivalent, and it means an ALNCo's pay in Wales should be checked against the leadership range rather than a classroom point plus an allowance.

Leadership and lead practitioner pay

This is where the two documents look least alike. England abolished its 43-point leadership spine in 2014 and replaced it with broad ranges — a single leadership pay range plus eight headteacher group ranges, within which a governing body sets an individual's pay range at its discretion.

Wales kept the spine. The Welsh leadership group pay range is still a numbered spine of 43 points (L1–L43), with the maxima of the eight headteacher group ranges falling at specified points on that spine rather than being separately defined bands. For September 2026 the spine runs from approximately £54,524 at L1 to £151,434 at L43. The leading practitioner pay range — Wales uses the same term as England for teachers whose primary purpose is modelling and leading improvement of teaching skills — is not a spine. Paragraph 16.3 of the STPC(W)D sets it out as a plain minimum and maximum, exactly like England's, with the relevant body determining an individual pay range within it and then determining where in that range each teacher sits. It runs from £52,939 to £80,478 in the confirmed September 2025 document, or approximately £54,792 to £83,295 for September 2026 after the 3.5% award. So the "Wales kept the spine" point applies to the leadership group only — on advanced classroom pay, the two nations are structurally the same.

The practical difference is discretion. A numbered spine constrains where an individual leader's pay can sit far more tightly than an English-style range does, which makes Welsh leadership pay more predictable and more comparable between schools — and gives a Welsh governing body materially less room to pay above or below the local norm for a similarly sized school. If you are comparing a Welsh deputy headship against an English one, the Welsh figure is likely to be a better guide to what the post actually pays than the English range is.

How Wales compares with England in cash

Here is the result that surprises most people, including plenty of teachers on both sides of the border: for 2026/27, the Welsh national scale pays more than England's national rate at every equivalent stage — despite Wales having awarded less than its own review body recommended, and despite both nations landing on the same 3.5% headline. The reason is that the two scales had already drifted apart in cash terms across several separate settlements since 2019, and a common percentage applied to different starting points preserves the gap rather than closing it.

Two honest caveats before anyone books a removal van. First, the comparison above is against England's national rate — the rate outside the London and fringe areas. England's weighted bands change the picture completely: M6 in Inner London is £54,131, comfortably above the Welsh M6 and even above the Welsh U3. Since none of England's weighting bands extend into Wales, a Welsh teacher has no route to a weighted rate without moving to south-east England. Second, the Welsh award is confirmed but the revised STPC(W)D had not been published when this page was updated, so check the exact points against it once it is.

Gross pay is also not take-home pay, though here the comparison is unusually clean: Wales and England use identical income tax, National Insurance and student loan rules, so a gross difference translates into a net difference in the ordinary way, with no nation-specific tax effect to model. Put both figures through our teacher take-home pay calculator to see the monthly net. That is genuinely different from a Scotland/England comparison, where separate Scottish income tax bands shrink the net gap relative to the gross one.

Structural differences at a glance

Moving between Wales and England

Because the border is short, porous and lined with commuter towns, cross-border moves are far more common for Welsh and English teachers than for Scottish or Northern Irish ones. A few things are worth getting right before accepting a post on the other side of it.

• Your pay point does not simply translate. The scales are different lengths and different numbers. A Welsh teacher on M2 is an entry-level teacher; an English teacher on M2 is in their second year. Nobody should be reading "M4 to M4" as a like-for-like move — get the specific cash figure confirmed in writing, not the point label.
• Portability works differently in each direction. Wales reintroduced pay portability after devolution; England's STPCD leaves placement within the range to the school's discretion, taking account of relevant prior experience. Moving Wales → England, you are moving into the more discretionary regime, so ask explicitly at offer stage rather than assuming your point travels.
• Check for a weighting band on the English side. If the English post is anywhere near the Fringe boundary, the weighted rate rather than the national rate is what you are comparing against — and Fringe, Outer and Inner London are defined by specific local authority and postcode lists, not by how London the area feels.
• Check whether the English post is an academy. Around half of England's schools, and the large majority of secondaries, are academies, which are not legally bound by the STPCD and may operate their own pay spine. This has no Welsh equivalent, so it is an entirely new question for a teacher moving east. Read the trust's published pay policy.
• Your pension is unaffected. Moving between England and Wales does not interrupt, transfer or change your Teachers' Pension Scheme membership in any way — it is one scheme covering both nations. Your service simply continues. The contribution tier you fall into may change if your salary changes, but that is a salary effect, not a nation effect.
• Welsh-medium teaching is a real career variable. Wales has a persistent shortage of teachers able to teach through the medium of Welsh — it is a recurring theme in IWPRB evidence, and there are Welsh Government incentive schemes aimed at it. If you have Welsh language capability, it is worth more in the Welsh labour market than a pay table alone will tell you.

What is still shared UK-wide

It is easy to over-correct here, so this section is deliberately blunt about what has not changed. Wales having its own pay document does not mean Wales has its own version of everything.

• The Teachers' Pension Scheme is shared. The TPS covers England and Wales as one scheme. Same career average (CARE) structure, same accrual rate, same contribution tiers, same normal pension age rules, same administrator, same McCloud remedy. A Welsh teacher's pension position is identical to an English teacher's on the same salary. Every pension guide and pension calculator on this site applies to Welsh teachers without caveat. (Scotland and Northern Ireland do have separate schemes; Wales does not.)
• Income tax is effectively the same. Wales has a Welsh Rate of Income Tax mechanism, but the rates set under it have been maintained at the same levels as the rest of the UK, so Welsh taxpayers face the same Personal Allowance and the same basic, higher and additional rate thresholds as English taxpayers. Scotland is the only nation with a genuinely different band structure.
• National Insurance is UK-wide. Set by the UK Government, identical everywhere.
• Student loan repayments are the same. Welsh-domiciled students borrow from Student Finance Wales rather than the Student Loans Company's English arm, but the repayment plans, thresholds and rates work on the same UK-wide basis, and your employer deducts them identically.
• The Burgundy Book still applies. The national conditions of service agreement — formally the Conditions of Service for School Teachers in England and Wales — continues to cover both nations, including its sickness and maternity provisions and the 1/365th strike deduction convention. Pay devolution did not split it.
• QTS is recognised across both nations. Wales maintains its own registration body (the Education Workforce Council), and you must register with it to teach in Wales, but QTS itself is not re-earned when you cross the border.

In short: pay scale figures and the pay document are Welsh; pensions, tax and national conditions of service are not. If you see a site claiming Welsh teachers are in a separate pension scheme, or pay different tax, that is a different error in the opposite direction.

Where to check the figures yourself

Because the revised 2026/27 STPC(W)D followed the award by a few weeks, knowing the primary sources matters more than usual this year:

• The STPC(W)D itself, published on gov.wales — this is the statutory document and the only authoritative source for a legally binding figure. Check which revision you are looking at; the 2025 document was revised in both February and March 2026.
• Welsh Government Written Statements on the teachers' pay award, which announce the award and the government's response to the IWPRB before the document itself is revised.
• The IWPRB's annual reports, which contain the recommendation, the full evidence base, and appendices with the recommended scale points — remembering that recommended is not the same as awarded, which is exactly the trap in 2026/27.
• Teaching unions in Wales — NASUWT Cymru, NEU Cymru and UCAC all publish the Welsh scale promptly, usually with a clear note about whether the figures are confirmed or provisional.
• Your own school's pay policy and your payslip. Welsh maintained schools are bound by the STPC(W)D, so there is far less scope for local variation than in England — but your payslip is still the definitive record of the point you are actually on.

Sources

• Written Statement: Teachers' Pay Award 2026/27 (13 July 2026) — GOV.WALES, the source for the 3.5% award, the 5% unqualified uplift, and the affordability reasoning
• Independent Welsh Pay Review Body: Seventh Report 2026 — GOV.WALES (Recommendation 1, the 4.25% recommendation; Appendix B, the September 2025 scale points and recommended 2026 points)
• School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (Wales) Document 2025 (revised March 2026) — GOV.WALES, the operative statutory document at the time of writing
• The School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (Wales) Order 2026, which gives the revised document statutory effect
• Pay Scales (Wales) — NASUWT, the source for the September 2026 cash figures used in the tables above
• School Teachers' Review Body 36th Report: 2026 — GOV.UK, for the England figures used in the comparisons