Arthur Terry Learning Partnership Teacher Pay (2026/27)

Most of the trust profiles on this site have to work around a shortage of evidence. This one has the opposite problem. The Arthur Terry Learning Partnership is, by some distance, the best-documented trust pay and employment story in England in the last two years: a published pay policy, audited accounts, a formal DfE intervention, nine days of reported industrial action across two counties, contemporaneous coverage from Schools Week, ITV News Central, the Express & Star and Education Uncovered, a joint statement published by the trust itself, and a secretary of state decision. Almost everything below can be traced to a primary or trade-press source.

It is also a serious story about real people losing their jobs and real schools in financial distress, and it is worth handling with some care. The purpose of this page is not to rehearse a scandal. It is to answer the practical question a teacher actually has — what am I paid, what happens to my terms, and what should I ask — in a situation where the honest answer is genuinely complicated.

The headline: this trust is being broken up

Lead with the thing that matters most. On 21 May 2026, Schools Week reported that education secretary Bridget Phillipson had decided that all of ATLP's academies should transition to a small number of high-performing, regionally based trusts. The reporting framed it as the largest breakup of an academy trust since Wakefield City Academies Trust, which ran 21 schools, collapsed in 2017.

That is a different kind of fact from anything else on this site's trust pages, and it changes what a pay profile is for. Nobody joining an ATLP school in the 2026/27 academic year is making a long-term decision about ATLP as an employer, because ATLP is not going to be their employer for long. The relevant questions become: which trust is this school going to, when, what does that trust pay, and what survives the transfer.

What the Arthur Terry Learning Partnership is

ATLP is a mixed primary and secondary multi-academy trust built outward from The Arthur Terry School in Four Oaks, Sutton Coldfield. It runs 24 academies — confirmed on the DfE's Get Information About Schools register — spread across Birmingham, Sutton Coldfield, Coventry, North Warwickshire and Staffordshire, with clusters around Lichfield and Tamworth. The trust's own published material describes more than 11,200 students and over 1,500 members of staff. It also runs a teaching school hub and a SCITT.

The estate is heavily weighted towards primaries: Anna Seward, Brookvale, Coton Green, Curdworth, Deykin Avenue, Dunstall Park, Greysbrooke, Hill West, Mere Green, Osborne, Paget, Scotch Orchard, Slade, St Chad's, St Michael's, Two Gates and William MacGregor, alongside secondaries including The Arthur Terry School, Nether Stowe, Stockland Green, The Coleshill School, The Royal Sutton School and West Coventry Academy.

All of these sit in the national (rest of England) pay region, with no London or fringe weighting anywhere in the trust. That matters for comparison: an ATLP salary should be read against the national STPCD points, not against London figures, and the trust competes for staff against maintained schools and other Midlands trusts paying those same national rates.

How the finances went wrong

The financial story is unusually well documented, and it is worth setting out because it explains everything that followed.

The most frequently reported single cause is a one-to-one device programme. Reporting describes the trust putting a device in the hands of every pupil and member of staff — around 11,000 iPads in total, of which roughly 5,500 were purchased outright and 5,500 leased — creating an ongoing annual commitment in excess of £1 million. That is a large recurring cost for a trust of this size to carry against flat per-pupil funding.

The regulatory consequences arrived in 2024, when the Department for Education issued ATLP with a notice to improve on financial grounds and offered a £1.5 million loan. That did not stabilise the position. By the 2024-25 accounts the deficit had grown from roughly £4 million to £8.4 million, the trust had drawn down £3.5 million in government loans in full, and a further £1 million in repayable funding had been agreed in principle. During the January 2026 dispute the NEU described the debts as approaching £9 million and climbing. The DfE additionally provided restructuring funding on a non-recoverable basis — a grant rather than a loan — to cover the costs of redundancies, and a draw-down facility to let the trust pay its creditors on time, with repayments beginning in September 2026 over three years.

The January 2026 strikes

In autumn 2025 the trust opened restructuring and redundancy consultations. The National Education Union said the proposals would cost around 100 jobs across the trust, and argued that large-scale redundancies would increase workload for the staff who remained and reduce support for children. The union balloted and won.

The joint statement is worth quoting directly because it is the trust's own published words rather than a union account: ATLP said the union had "raised several important challenges, which ATLP has responded to positively by adjusting its plans to secure the trust's financial recovery", and that "the new position has been accepted by NEU members". In March 2026 Schools Week reported that the trust had honoured all voluntary redundancy requests, restructured roles within the central team instead of making compulsory cuts, and consulted on scaling back the iPad programme. Interim chief executive Lee Miller said difficult decisions were still needed to reduce the deficit, but that the trust was working in a transparent and open manner with its union partners.

The leadership collapse

Between December 2025 and February 2026, the trust's entire strategic leadership left. Education Uncovered documented the sequence in its account of how the staff and parent campaign toppled the leadership of a 24-school trust:

• Brian Cookson, chair of the finance committee — resigned 9 December 2025.
• Simon Smith, chief finance and operations officer — resigned 31 December 2025.
• Sir David Carter, a controlling member of the trust and a former national schools commissioner — stood down 31 December 2025.
• John Vickers, chair of the trust board — resigned 1 January 2026.
• David Watson, trustee — resigned 27 January 2026, during the strikes.
• Richard Gill CBE, chief executive of nearly ten years — took a leave of absence during the strike action, then resigned. Schools Week reported the resignation on 6 February 2026.

Schools Week's report on the chief executive's resignation noted that Gill was a prominent figure in the sector — a designated National Leader of Education who chaired the Teaching School Hubs Council and had been awarded a CBE in 2020. Lee Miller, deputy chief executive of the Thinking Schools Academy Trust, was appointed interim chief executive in January 2026, with Helen Stevenson as chair and David McVean as vice chair.

We are setting this out as a matter of record rather than as commentary. What it means practically for a teacher is narrow but real: the people who wrote and approved the current pay policy have all gone, the trust that holds it is being wound down, and the arrangements described in the next section have no guarantee of surviving into whichever trust takes over.

What the published pay policy actually says

ATLP publishes a full trust pay policy covering teachers, support staff and executives. That alone puts it ahead of most trusts: several large trusts profiled on this site publish nothing at all about employment terms. The document is version 4, approved by the Trust Board on 30 January 2023.

Its opening paragraph settles the most important structural question. The policy states that it was developed to comply with current legislation, "the requirements of the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD)" and the NJC Green Book for support staff. ATLP is therefore an STPCD-following trust by design — it is not using academy freedoms to build a bespoke scale the way United Learning does, nor to pay above the national rate the way Ark does. It mirrors the national framework.

The specific provisions worth knowing:

• Automatic annual pay progression. The policy says eligible teachers "will be automatically considered for progression and no application will be necessary", that "annual pay progression within the relevant range is automatic", and that teachers progress one point a year until the top of their range unless there are performance or conduct concerns. This is a stronger position than the performance-gated progression operated by several large trusts, and it is written down.
• Accelerated progression is available. Where the headteacher and pay committee are satisfied that teaching quality is excellent or exceptional and exceeds expectations for the career stage, a teacher can move more than one point.
• Six main-range points and three upper-range points, explicitly aligned to the STPCD advisory points at Annex 3.
• A Leading Practitioner range, plus TLR1, TLR2 and fixed-term TLR3 payments and SEN allowances, all set by reference to the STPCD bands.
• A shortage-subject recruitment incentive of £10,000 spread over three years — £2,000 at the end of year one, £2,000 at the end of year two and £6,000 at the end of year three — for Design Technology, MFL, SEND, Science, Maths and English posts, used only in schools where recruitment is challenging. Other recruitment and retention incentives of up to £3,000 a year are also provided for.
• Pay reviewed annually by 30 November, backdated to 1 September, with written notification within one month of the decision, and a three-stage appeals process.
• The policy is reviewed annually and shared with the recognised trade unions for their views.

On pay portability, the policy is honest rather than generous: it says there is "no assumption that a teacher will be paid at the same rate as they were being paid in a previous school however where possible the Trust will endeavour to do this". That is a weaker commitment than Co-op Academies Trust's explicit pay portability clause, and it means your starting point is negotiable — which cuts both ways.

For scale, here is how the policy's published points compare with the confirmed national figures for 2026/27. The gap is the accumulated national pay awards since 2022, not an ATLP shortfall — but it does show how misleading a stale published policy can be if you read the cash values at face value.

Model what any of those points is actually worth in the hand with our take-home pay calculator.

Beyond salary: the rest of the package

ATLP publishes a benefits page, and the non-pay offer is reasonable rather than exceptional. These are the trust's own stated terms.

• Teachers' Pension Scheme for teaching staff and the Local Government Pension Scheme for support staff, both with standard employer contributions. This is the single most important thing to confirm about any academy trust and ATLP passes it.
• Enhanced annual leave for support staff — 26 days up to five years' service, 29 days up to ten years and 31 days beyond, plus eight public holidays and four concessionary days, giving a total range of 38 to 43 days. That is genuinely generous by support staff standards.
• An employee assistance programme with 24/7 access to qualified counsellors, up to eight face-to-face counselling sessions, financial and debt advice, a dedicated menopause support service and mental health advice for leaders.
• Enhanced parental leave, flexible working and family-friendly policies, stated as a core commitment rather than case-by-case discretion.
• An additional professional development and wellbeing day, and tailored CPD through the trust's teaching school hub.
• A free staff lottery with a monthly £125 prize — trivial financially, but indicative of the trust's approach to staff engagement.

One detail worth flagging: the trust's benefits page states its Teachers' Pension Scheme employer contribution as 23.68 per cent, rising to 28.68 per cent. The 28.68 per cent rate has been in force since April 2024, which tells you the page has not been refreshed in some time — a small but useful reminder that trust-published material ages badly and needs checking against a live offer.

The appraisal arrangements are also unusual and worth noting. The trust states publicly that its appraisal system has "no set targets" and works "on the assumption that everyone will be successful". Taken together with the automatic progression clause in the pay policy, that is a coherent and relatively teacher-friendly position on performance and pay — and it is exactly the sort of trust-level arrangement that a transfer to a new employer could unwind.

What's verified and what isn't

Because this page describes a live and fast-moving situation, it matters more than usual to separate what is on the record from what is inference.

• Well evidenced: the £8.4 million deficit in the 2024-25 accounts, the earlier ~£4 million deficit, the 2024 DfE notice to improve, the £1.5 million loan offer, the £3.5 million drawn down and the further £1 million agreed in principle — all from Schools Week reporting on the trust's accounts.
• Well evidenced: the January 2026 strikes — 800+ NEU members, 20 schools, nine days announced and a further nine added — reported by ITV News Central, the Express & Star and Lichfield Live contemporaneously.
• Well evidenced: the settlement terms, because ATLP published the joint statement with the NEU on its own website on 30 January 2026.
• Well evidenced: the six senior resignations and their dates, documented by Education Uncovered, with the CEO resignation separately reported by Schools Week on 6 February 2026.
• Well evidenced: the decision to transfer all 24 academies to other trusts, reported by Schools Week on 21 May 2026 as a decision of the education secretary.
• Well evidenced: the content of the published pay policy, because it is a published document you can read yourself.

• Not found: any current (2025/26 or 2026/27) version of the ATLP pay policy. The published version is written against STPCD 2022 and its cash figures are stale.
• Not known: which trusts individual ATLP schools will transfer to, or on what timetable. No destination trusts had been publicly confirmed at the time of writing.
• Not known: whether the automatic progression commitment, the no-set-targets appraisal approach or the shortage-subject incentive will survive a transfer. TUPE protects contractual terms, not trust policies.
• Not verified: the final number of job losses. The NEU's figure of around 100 was a figure for what was proposed; the consultations were then withdrawn and voluntary redundancies honoured instead. We could not establish a final total.
• Not verified: directed time practice at individual ATLP schools. The pay policy is STPCD-aligned, which implies the 1,265-hour framework applies, but we found no published directed time policy or calendar.

What a transfer actually means for your pay

This is the section that matters most to anyone currently employed by ATLP, and the good news is that the legal position is well settled even though the commercial position is not.

When a school moves between academy trusts, staff transfer under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations. TUPE carries your existing contract of employment across to the new employer, with your continuity of service, your salary, your pay point, your contractual allowances and your terms intact. Your new employer cannot lawfully cut your pay simply because it would prefer to pay less, and dismissals for a reason connected to the transfer itself are automatically unfair unless there is an economic, technical or organisational reason entailing changes in the workforce. Teachers' Pension Scheme membership continues.

So the practical advice for existing ATLP staff is: get your current terms in writing now, before any transfer completes, and keep a copy of the pay policy as it stands. If your progression, your TLR or your working pattern rests on informal arrangement rather than written contract, ask for it to be documented. And join or engage with the union at your school — the January 2026 dispute demonstrated, unusually clearly, that collective organisation at this trust worked. Our guide to what happens to your pay when a school changes hands covers the mechanics in more detail.

What changes under the 2026 Act

The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 requires academies to have regard to the STPCD and to meet a statutory minimum pay floor set by reference to the STPCD pay ranges. The timing is widely misreported. Section 59 and Schedule 3 commenced on 29 June 2026, which gives the Secretary of State the power to make a minimum remuneration order; academies are only actually required to pay the floor once that order is made, and the Department for Education has said that will be no earlier than September 2026. No order had been made at the time of writing. The commonly quoted September 2027 date belongs to a separate provision of the same Act — QTS becoming a requirement in academies — not to the pay floor. The Act also extends the School Teachers' Review Body's remit to cover academies. A government amendment during the bill's passage confirmed that the floor is a floor and not a ceiling.

For ATLP itself the change is close to academic, because the trust already writes its pay policy to comply with the STPCD and is being dissolved before the duty bites. But it is genuinely relevant to the schools transferring out, and in a helpful direction. Whichever trusts take over ATLP's academies will be subject to the same statutory minimum, which narrows the range of outcomes a transfer can produce on basic pay. It does not constrain the progression, appraisal or directed time arrangements those trusts operate, which is where the actual variation lies. Our guide to the academy pay floor sets out what the duty does and does not cover.

How to check before you apply

The usual checks apply, plus several specific to a trust in transition. None of these are awkward questions, and a school being straight with you about a difficult situation is a good sign rather than a bad one.

• Ask which trust this school is expected to transfer to, and when. The school may genuinely not know, and saying so is a fair answer. What you want to avoid is discovering the transfer after you have accepted.
• Ask for the current teachers' pay policy in writing, not the version on the website. Check the approval date and the pay scale figures against the current national points.
• Ask whether automatic pay progression still applies and get the answer in writing. This is the single most valuable provision in the published policy and the one most exposed to change.
• Ask which specific pay point you are being offered, not the range. And on the pay portability point specifically: ask whether your existing pay point will be matched, because the policy says there is no assumption that it will be.
• Ask about the directed time calendar — how many hours it totals, whether it is published to staff, and whether union reps were consulted on it.
• Confirm the pension scheme and employer contribution rate in the offer letter. TPS on standard terms for teaching staff, LGPS for support staff.
• Ask about job security directly. The consultations were withdrawn in January 2026, but the deficit has not gone away and interim leadership has said difficult decisions remain. Ask whether this school has been through a restructure and whether one is anticipated.
• Talk to the union rep at the school. After January 2026 there will be one, and they will have a clearer view of the real position than anyone else you can speak to.

And a closing point of fairness to the trust. The staff at ATLP schools organised, struck, and got the redundancy plans withdrawn and a commitment to review central costs. The leadership that presided over the deficit has gone. A school where the workforce has just demonstrated that it can act collectively and win is not obviously a worse place to work than one where nobody has ever tested the question. The instability is real; so is the fact that the people in these schools successfully defended their jobs.