Charter Schools Educational Trust Teacher Pay (2026/27)

What this page is and isn't

It is worth being upfront about the shape of the evidence here, because this page is different from the larger trust profiles elsewhere in this section.

For a trust like Co-op Academies Trust we can read a published pay policy line by line and tell you what every pay point, TLR band and allowance is worth. For the Charter Schools Educational Trust we cannot: we could not find a published teachers' pay policy, a conditions of service document, a directed time policy or a trade union recognition agreement in the public domain. The trust's website is substantial and well-produced but is oriented towards school improvement partnerships rather than employment terms.

What we do have is one exceptionally well-documented episode. The July 2025 maternity pay dispute was covered contemporaneously by Schools Week, Southwark News and the NEU itself, with specific figures, named schools, dated strike days and a settlement whose terms were reported in detail. That is far more than most trusts of this size leave on the record, and it is genuinely informative — but it is a window onto one issue, not a pay profile. This page treats it that way, and does not extrapolate from it.

What the Charter Schools Educational Trust is

The trust — which brands itself as The Charter Trust — grew out of the academisation of The Charter School North Dulwich in 2010 and now runs nine schools serving over 4,500 pupils from nursery to sixth form. Its registered office is on Red Post Hill in Herne Hill. Its chief executive is Cassie Buchanan OBE.

On the DfE's Get Information About Schools register the nine open academies are three secondaries — The Charter School North Dulwich, The Charter School East Dulwich and The Charter School Bermondsey — and six primaries: Dulwich Hamlet Junior School, The Belham Primary School, Charles Dickens Primary School and Lyndhurst Primary School in Southwark, and Streatham Wells Primary and Loughborough Primary School in Lambeth. Seven schools sit in Southwark and two in Lambeth.

The trust also hosts a Teaching School Hub, an EEF Research School, a Challenge Partners hub, a Behaviour Hub, an Early Years Stronger Practice Hub, and is designated a Flexible Working Ambassador School. That last designation is worth noting in the context of what follows: a trust holding a national role on flexible working is one whose family-friendly terms are reasonably subject to scrutiny.

Base pay: Inner London, on the national scale

Every Charter school is in Southwark or Lambeth, which are both Inner London for pay purposes. That single fact does more work on a Charter salary than anything the trust decides. Inner London weighting is the largest structural uplift available anywhere in the English pay system, and it dwarfs the trust-level differentials — one to five and a half per cent — that the handful of above-scale trusts offer.

We found no evidence that the Charter Trust pays above the national Inner London scale, no published pay policy stating a trust allowance, and no advert or trade press report describing one. The NEU's account of the 2025 settlement is that the trust agreed "a pay policy which aligns with STPCD" — a commitment to follow the national framework, not to exceed it. So the working assumption should be the standard Inner London points: for context, the top of the main pay range in Inner London for 2026/27 is £54,131. Check the full national scale for every point, and model what any of them is worth after tax, National Insurance and pension with our take-home pay calculator.

The two-tier maternity pay dispute

On 11 July 2025 Schools Week published its report on the dispute, and the numbers in it are the core of this page.

Teachers' maternity pay is governed nationally by the Burgundy Book — the national conditions of service agreement — which provides an occupational scheme running well beyond the statutory minimum. Individual employers can, and many do, improve on it. Schools Week reported the Charter Trust's position as follows, measured as total maternity pay over 12 months for a teacher at the top of the main pay range:

The gap between the two Charter schemes was therefore around £4,800 for the same job with the same employer. Both schemes were better than the national baseline — that is the trust's strongest point in its own defence, and it made it. But the NEU's argument was about the internal difference rather than the external comparison. General secretary Daniel Kebede described it as a "two-tier policy" and said it was not fair that some staff received thousands more maternity pay than colleagues despite sharing the same employer.

The trust's response was about affordability. A Charter spokesperson said that when trying to protect jobs because of falling rolls and increased costs, the trust simply did not have the wriggle room to nearly double its existing commitment — a reference to levelling all schools up to the Lambeth rate. Chief executive Cassie Buchanan noted that the trust's maternity pay was already significantly above the nationally agreed rate for teachers. The NEU's characterisation of the trust's negotiating position before the strike was blunter: "complete intransigence", with the union saying it had not been offered a single penny more.

How the strike unfolded

Two things about that sequence are worth drawing out. First, it was short: a fortnight from first strike day to signed agreement, which is unusually quick for a trust dispute and suggests a negotiation that was closer to landing than the public positions implied. Second, the settlement levelled up rather than down. Harmonising terms after a merger or transfer very often means bringing everyone to the less generous scheme, because that is the cheaper way to end a two-tier arrangement. That did not happen here, and the union did not have to defend the Lambeth schools' legacy terms against a downward harmonisation. For anyone weighing how this trust behaves under pressure, that is the most useful single fact on this page.

What the settlement actually delivered

On the maternity point specifically: if you are considering a Charter post and maternity provision matters to you, the practical question is which scheme applies at the specific school. The weighted average narrowed the gap; it does not appear to have abolished the distinction between schools carrying legacy Lambeth terms and the rest. Ask for the maternity policy for that school in writing, and read it alongside our guide to teacher maternity pay and pension, which explains how the Burgundy Book scheme works and what an enhanced scheme is actually adding.

The pay policy change almost nobody reported

The maternity headline dominated coverage, but the NEU's own account of the settlement includes a second element that is arguably worth more to more staff over a career.

The union states that the deal included a pay policy aligned with the STPCD, replacing a previous policy that had no automatic pay progression and used a six-point scale for teachers on the upper pay range. If that account is accurate — and we have not been able to read either policy — both changes are substantial.

• Automatic progression. Without it, every step up the main pay range is a discretionary decision made about you each year, with the burden on you to evidence it. With it, progression is the default and the employer has to justify withholding it. Over the six points of the main range that is the difference between a predictable career trajectory and an annual negotiation.
• A three-point rather than six-point upper pay range. The STPCD upper range has three points. Stretching it to six roughly doubles the time it takes to reach the top, which means years spent on a lower salary than the national structure would give you for the same experience — and, because pension accrual under the career average scheme is based on what you actually earn each year, a permanently smaller pension as well.
• Alignment with the STPCD generally. Beyond progression, this implies the trust's TLR bands, SEN allowances, pay protection and appeals arrangements now track the national document rather than departing from it.

Alongside this, the recognition agreement with full bargaining rights is the machinery that makes the rest durable. A policy agreed once can be changed; a policy that has to be renegotiated through a body with bargaining rights is considerably harder to unwind quietly. Separately, the Community trade union has also secured recognition with the trust, with quarterly meetings to review policies — so support staff have their own route as well.

Why legacy terms create two-tier pay

The Charter dispute is a specific instance of a general problem, and understanding the mechanism is useful well beyond this one trust.

When a maintained school converts to academy status, its staff transfer under TUPE and carry their existing terms with them — including whatever occupational maternity, sickness and redundancy provision the local authority offered. Lambeth's maternity scheme was more generous than the Burgundy Book baseline, so the two Lambeth schools arrived at the Charter Trust carrying Lambeth terms. Southwark's was less generous, so the Southwark schools arrived carrying Southwark terms. Neither trust nor staff chose the resulting difference; it is simply what happens when a trust assembles schools from more than one local authority.

The difficulty is what happens next. TUPE protects transferred terms, which means the trust cannot simply cut the Lambeth schools to the Southwark level. But nothing obliges it to raise everyone to the Lambeth level either. So the differential persists, sometimes for years, and it persists inside a single employer — which is exactly the position the Equality Act takes an interest in when the benefit in question is maternity pay, a benefit that by definition falls on one sex.

What's verified and what isn't

• Well evidenced: the maternity pay figures — approximately £27,800 at the Lambeth schools, around £23,000 elsewhere, against a Burgundy Book baseline of £17,600 at the top of the main pay range — reported by Schools Week on 11 July 2025.
• Well evidenced: the strike dates, the number of schools affected, the 300-plus members involved, and the fact that two of four announced days were taken before settlement, from contemporaneous Schools Week and Southwark News reporting.
• Well evidenced: the settlement terms — a weighted average system giving Southwark staff around eight extra days of full maternity pay — reported by Schools Week on 17 July 2025 and confirmed in the NEU's own account.
• Well evidenced: the trust's size and composition, from the DfE's Get Information About Schools register.

• Not found: any published Charter Trust teachers' pay policy, conditions of service document, directed time policy or maternity policy. None of the settlement documents appear to be in the public domain.
• Reported by the union but not independently verified: the details of the pay policy change — no automatic progression and a six-point upper pay range in the old policy, STPCD alignment in the new one — and the recognition agreement securing over £15,000 a year in facility time.
• Not verified: whether the weighted average scheme eliminated the school-by-school maternity difference entirely or merely narrowed it. The phrase "weighted average" implies a point between the two, not convergence on the higher rate.
• Not verified: anything about base pay above the Inner London scale, TLR values, directed time, PPA provision or workload at this trust. We have no evidence either way and are not going to infer any.
• Not known: whether the falling rolls and cost pressures the trust cited in July 2025 have since led to restructuring or redundancy. Several London trusts have run redundancy programmes on exactly that basis.

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 its pay ranges, and extends the School Teachers' Review Body's remit to academies. The timing is widely misreported: Section 59 and Schedule 3 commenced on 29 June 2026, giving the Secretary of State the power to make a minimum remuneration order, but academies are only actually bound once that order is made — which the Department for Education has said will be no earlier than September 2026, and which had not happened at the time of writing. The September 2027 date often quoted alongside this Act is for a different provision, QTS becoming a requirement in academies. A government amendment confirmed the floor is a floor and not a ceiling.

For a trust that has already agreed an STPCD-aligned pay policy the pay floor itself is unlikely to bite. The more relevant point is the one the Charter dispute illustrates: the Act governs pay, and the two-tier problem here was in conditions — occupational maternity provision, which sits in the Burgundy Book rather than the STPCD and is not covered by the statutory floor at all. Legacy differences in maternity, sickness and redundancy terms across a trust's schools will still be there once the pay floor takes effect, and will still be a matter for negotiation rather than statute. Our guide to the academy pay floor sets out what the duty does and does not reach.

How to check before you apply

Because this trust publishes so little, almost all of the checking falls on you — and the maternity episode gives you a clear steer on what to ask about.

• Ask for the current teachers' pay policy in writing, and check its approval date. You want the post-2025 version, and you want to see whether automatic progression is in it and whether the upper pay range has three points or six.
• Ask which specific pay point you are being offered, not the advertised range, and whether your existing point will be matched.
• Ask for the occupational maternity, paternity, sickness and redundancy terms for that specific school. This is the question this whole page exists to prompt. A trust assembled from two local authorities may still carry differences, and the difference at Charter was worth thousands.
• Ask whether the school carries any legacy local authority terms at all, and if so which. It is a neutral factual question and the answer shapes several parts of your package.
• Ask for the school's directed time calendar — total hours, whether it is published to staff, and whether union reps were consulted on it. We have no information about directed time at this trust either way.
• Confirm the pension scheme is the Teachers' Pension Scheme on standard terms for teaching posts, and the Local Government Pension Scheme for support posts.
• Speak to the NEU rep at the school. After July 2025 there will be an organised one, and following a settlement they will have a clear view of what was actually agreed and how it is being applied.

And hold two things in mind at once about this trust. The documented facts are about a problem — a two-tier system that disadvantaged staff at seven of nine schools, defended by the employer until members struck. They are also about that problem being fixed, upwards, quickly, and alongside improvements to the pay policy and the recognition machinery. Neither half of that is the whole picture, and a nine-school trust with one well-documented episode is not a trust you can characterise confidently from the outside. Visit the school, ask the questions above, and form your own view.