Co-op Academies Trust Teacher Pay Explained (2026/27)

There is a habit in coverage of academy trust pay of treating "pays above scale" as the only question worth asking. It is the wrong frame for most applicants. Around a dozen trusts in England pay above the national scale at all, the spread among them is narrower than people expect, and the differences are small relative to a TLR, a pay point or a change of region. The question that actually decides whether you are treated well is duller: does the trust write its terms down, does it honour the national framework, and can you find out what you are getting before you sign.

Co-op Academies Trust is the clearest example on this site of a trust that scores well on that second question while being completely unremarkable on the first. Everything below comes from documents the trust publishes on its own website, which is itself the point.

What Co-op Academies Trust is

Co-op Academies Trust is sponsored by the Co-op Group and run from 1 Angel Square in Manchester. It operates primary, secondary and special schools for ages 3 to 19 across the North of England and the Midlands — Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Merseyside and Staffordshire — organised into four regional hubs. Its chief executive and accounting officer is Dr Chris Tomlinson.

On size, the trust's own published figures have moved recently and it is worth being precise. Its executive pay report states that as at 1 December 2025 the trust comprised 38 operational academies. Its main trust page states that in 2026 there are 40 academies across four regional hubs. Both are the trust's own numbers; the difference is growth over the intervening year. Pupil numbers are in the region of 21,000 and rising with the estate.

Every one of those schools sits in the national (rest of England) pay region — there is no London or fringe weighting anywhere in the trust. So a Co-op offer should be read against the national STPCD points, and the trust competes for staff against maintained schools and other northern trusts paying the same national rates.

The Co-op Group connection is not just branding. The trust's benefits page offers registration as a Co-op colleague member, giving 10 per cent off in Co-op Food stores and 30 per cent off Co-op own-brand products with a funeralcare benefit, plus access to the Co-operative Credit Union for salary-deducted saving and borrowing at rates it describes as competitive against high street lenders. Season ticket and rental deposit loans are also offered. None of that is transformative, but the credit union access in particular is a genuine benefit that few school employers provide.

The published pay scales

The trust's Teachers' Pay Policy 2025-2026 was reviewed and approved in August 2025, is owned by the Chief People Officer and carries a stated next review date of summer or autumn 2026. It sets out the trust's scales point by point. Here they are alongside the confirmed national figures for 2026/27, so you can see both what the published document says and what it is likely to become once the trust applies the current award.

The left-hand column is exactly the national STPCD scale for 2025/26 — not approximately, exactly. That is the single most useful fact on this page, because it means a Co-op offer can be compared against a maintained school offer by looking at one number, with no translation required. Contrast that with United Learning's bespoke bands, where working out whether an offer is good requires mapping a trust-specific structure onto the national one first.

The policy also publishes a Leading Practitioner scale of 16 points from £52,026 to £79,092, again the full statutory range, for teachers whose primary purpose is modelling and leading improvement in teaching. Headteachers set a five-point individual post range within it. There is no requirement for an academy to establish Leading Practitioner posts at all, so this is provision rather than guarantee.

On early career teachers the policy states the expectation that no ECT is paid less than MPR1 in year one and no less than MPR2 in year two, subject to successful completion of the end-of-year-one assessment. That is a floor, not a ceiling, and it is written down — which matters, because progression from M1 to M2 is the point at which some employers become vague.

Pay portability: a commitment most trusts won't make

This is the provision that most distinguishes Co-op from its peers, and it is worth explaining why it matters before quoting it.

Pay portability — the principle that a teacher moving schools carries their pay point with them — used to be a statutory requirement under the STPCD. It was removed, and since then the default across the sector has drifted towards employer discretion. Many trust pay policies now say something close to the opposite: that there is no assumption a teacher will be paid at the same rate as in their previous school, and that the trust will determine the appropriate rate taking account of whatever factors it considers relevant. That is a lawful position and a common one. It also means a teacher on M5 can find themselves offered M3 for a sideways move, and it falls hardest on people who move for family reasons rather than promotion.

Co-op's policy goes the other way. Clause 4.3 states that the trust "will maintain teachers' previous pay entitlements in accordance with the principle of pay portability within the national teachers' pay scale, and will seek information from a teacher's previous school to enable them to do this".

Two things in that wording are doing real work. First, "will maintain" rather than "will endeavour to maintain" — it is framed as a commitment, not an aspiration. Second, the trust takes on the administrative burden of obtaining the evidence from your previous school rather than leaving it to you to prove your pay history. Anyone who has tried to get a former employer to confirm a pay point in writing during a summer holiday will recognise why that second half matters.

1,265 hours, written into the pay policy

The single most contested issue in academy trust employment is directed time. Trusts that operate outside the STPCD are not bound by its 1,265-hour limit across 195 days, and that freedom is what allows some above-scale trusts to extend the contracted day in exchange for a modest uplift — the trade examined in detail on our Ark and Harris Federation profiles.

Co-op's position is stated at the top of the pay policy, at clause 1.4: "All teachers at Co-op Academies Trust are remunerated based on 1265 hours / 195 days per year (for payroll purposes this is recorded as 32.5 hours per week)."

That is the national directed time framework adopted as the basis of remuneration, in the trust's own published document. It is a meaningfully stronger starting point than a trust that simply declines to say. We would still make two honest qualifications. First, a statement about the basis of remuneration is not the same as a published directed time calendar showing how those hours are actually allocated at your school — that calendar is a school-level document and you should ask for it. Second, directed time has never been the whole of a teacher's working week anywhere; the 1,265 hours are the hours the employer can direct, not the hours the job takes.

TLRs at named cash values

Most trust pay policies handle Teaching and Learning Responsibility payments by referring to the STPCD range and leaving the actual value to the headteacher's discretion. Co-op publishes a ladder of named figures, which means you can tell before applying roughly what a responsibility post is worth.

The endpoints — TLR 2A and TLR 1D — are the STPCD statutory minimum and maximum for those payments, with the trust defining intermediate steps in between. Our guide to TLR payments explains what the criteria actually require and why a TLR is worth more over a career than an equivalent one-off sum.

Three provisions in the TLR section are worth flagging specifically. The policy states that TLR payments should not be used for recruitment and retention purposes — a correct reading of the STPCD that stops a trust dressing up a golden hello as a permanent responsibility payment. It states that teachers will not be required to undertake substantial permanent additional responsibilities without payment of an appropriate permanent TLR, which is a real protection against responsibility creep. And it confirms that in 2025/26 TLR1 and TLR2 payments continue to be pro-rated for part-time teachers, which is a point of live dispute across the sector and one you should check applies as you expect if you work part time. Our guide to part-time and job-share pay covers how pro-rating interacts with responsibility posts.

Getting onto the upper pay range

The policy carries a dedicated annex setting out the criteria for movement to the upper pay range, alongside a template annual salary statement, a full appeal process and the order of proceedings for a pay appeal hearing.

Publishing appeal machinery in this much detail is not decorative. A pay appeal is the mechanism by which a refused progression decision gets reviewed, and the practical difference between a trust with a documented three-stage process and one with an informal arrangement is whether you can hold the employer to a timetable. If you are ever refused progression, the existence of Annexes 3 and 4 is what you will be relying on.

Pay reviews run between 1 September and 31 October each year, with written notification of the outcome by 30 November at the latest. The policy notes correctly that providing an annual salary statement is a statutory requirement even where the salary has not changed — so if you do not receive one, that is a straightforward thing to chase.

Extra payments, and what's pensionable

The policy covers additional earning opportunities in more detail than most, and sets rate caps rather than leaving them open.

• School-led tutoring. Teachers volunteering for additional tutoring outside directed time are paid their usual hourly rate, capped at the equivalent of UPR3. The policy states that additional earning opportunities will be offered internally first wherever possible, and that academies may flex the rate only when going to external agencies.
• Summer schools and holiday programmes. Usual hourly rate, capped at the equivalent of Leadership 5.
• Other out-of-school learning activities — breakfast clubs, homework clubs, sporting activities — at locally determined rates.
• Senior Leaders of Education working at other trust academies are paid at their usual rate, with a defined calculation for part-time colleagues working on days they are not normally contracted.
• Recruitment and retention payments are available where a post is hard to fill or a teacher's specialist skills need retaining, with Regional Director approval required before any offer is communicated.
• No honoraria for teaching staff. The policy is explicit that no honorarium will be paid to a teacher for carrying out their professional duties, on the basis that the STPCD makes no provision for bonuses or honoraria.

Union recognition and the JCNC

The trust publishes a Trade Union Recognition and Facility Agreement, approved by the Trust Board on 9 March 2023 and applicable from 17 April 2023. It recognises seven unions: ASCL, NAHT, NEU and NASUWT for teachers, and GMB, UNISON and UNITE for support and other professional staff.

The substance is stronger than a bare recognition statement. The agreement recognises the unions for the purposes of collective bargaining, consultation and individual representation, and states that it is intended to assist in establishing "jointly agreed pay and conditions of employment" — bargaining rather than consultation on pay. It establishes a Joint Consultative and Negotiating Committee with its own published constitution at Annex 1 and a failure-to-agree procedure. It provides facility time for academy representatives, commits the trust to check-off arrangements for union subscriptions, and requires consultation with a Regional Trust HR Manager and a paid union official before disciplinary action against a union representative.

That is meaningfully better machinery than most trusts operate, and it is the reason the documentation on this page can be read as more than a public relations exercise: a pay policy that has been through a JCNC with bargaining rights has been argued over by people with an interest in the outcome. One honest caveat — the agreement carries a stated review date of March 2026, which has passed, and the published version is still the 2023 one.

Support staff and the Real Living Wage

Support staff at Co-op academies are paid on NJC pay scales under the Green Book rather than the STPCD, with the Local Government Pension Scheme rather than the Teachers' Pension Scheme.

On the Real Living Wage the position needs stating carefully. Co-op Academies Trust vacancies are advertised with the trust's lowest NJC grade explicitly labelled as being at Real Living Wage level — for example an NJC6 post at an actual commencing salary of £19,604 a year based on 32.5 hours, term time plus one week. The Co-op Group itself is a long-standing Real Living Wage payer and publicises pay awards on that basis. What we could not find is a trust-level accreditation statement from the Living Wage Foundation covering the academies, as distinct from the Group. And self-reported data on the jobs site Breakroom has a majority of respondents at the trust saying they are paid below the Real Living Wage for where they live — a small, self-selected sample that may well be picking up staff on term-time-only contracts where the annualised figure reads low even when the hourly rate does not.

The trust also publishes an executive pay report — required by the Academy Trust Handbook, showing staff paid over £100,000 in £10,000 bands with prior-year comparatives — alongside a gender and ethnicity pay gap report and a facility time report. Publishing the ethnicity pay gap is voluntary and still uncommon; publishing it alongside the gender gap is a reasonable signal of how seriously the trust treats pay equity reporting.

What's verified and what isn't

• Well evidenced: every pay figure, TLR band, Leading Practitioner point and policy commitment on this page, because they come from the trust's own published Teachers' Pay Policy 2025-2026, which anyone can download and read.
• Well evidenced: the pay portability commitment at clause 4.3 and the 1,265-hour statement at clause 1.4 — both direct quotations from that document.
• Well evidenced: union recognition for seven named unions, the JCNC and its constitution, and the collective bargaining framing, from the published Trade Union Recognition and Facility Agreement.
• Well evidenced: trust size, from the trust's own executive pay report (38 academies at 1 December 2025) and trust page (40 academies in 2026).

• Not found: a 2026-27 teachers' pay policy. The published version is the 2025-2026 document and its own review date has now passed.
• Not found: any published directed time calendar or conditions of service document at trust level. Clause 1.4 states the 1,265-hour basis but does not show how those hours are allocated.
• Not verified: a trust-level Real Living Wage accreditation for the academies, as opposed to advert-level labelling and the Co-op Group's own commitment.
• Not verified: whether TLR pro-rating for part-time teachers continues beyond 2025/26 — the policy commits to it only "in 25/26", which is unusually specific wording and implies it is reviewed.
• Weak evidence: anything about workload, culture or retention. Review-site samples for this trust are small and split across 40 schools in four regions. We would not draw conclusions from them and neither should you.

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, and extends the School Teachers' Review Body's remit to cover 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 required to pay the floor 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 separate provision, QTS becoming a requirement in academies. A government amendment confirmed the floor is a floor and not a ceiling.

Co-op is among the trusts for which this changes almost nothing, because it already applies the national scale, already states the 1,265-hour basis and already writes its policy to the STPCD. If anything the legislation makes the trust's existing approach the sector norm rather than a distinguishing feature.

The more interesting effect is comparative. Once a statutory floor exists, the thing that differentiates trusts is no longer whether they clear it — nearly all will — but what they do above it and how transparently they do it. Trusts that already publish detailed, negotiated pay policies are better placed for that world than trusts that publish nothing. Our guide to the academy pay floor sets out what the duty covers.

How to check before you apply

Because this trust publishes so much, the checks here are more about currency than discovery — you already know what the policy says, so the job is confirming it still applies.

• Ask for the current teachers' pay policy, and check whether a 2026-27 version has replaced the 2025-2026 one. Compare its scale points against the confirmed national figures for this year.
• Quote clause 4.3 if the pay point offered is below your current one. The pay portability commitment is published and unambiguous, and the trust has committed to seeking the evidence from your previous school itself.
• Ask which specific pay point you are being offered, in writing, not the advertised range.
• Ask for the school's directed time calendar. The policy states the 1,265-hour basis at trust level; the calendar shows how your school actually uses it.
• If the post carries a TLR, ask which band. The published ladder means you can check the figure quoted against the trust's own table, and ask how it will be pro-rated if you work part time.
• Confirm the pension scheme — Teachers' Pension Scheme on standard terms for teaching posts, LGPS for support posts — and, for support staff, ask for the hourly rate for the grade rather than the annualised figure.
• Ask whether the school has an active union rep and speak to them. With seven recognised unions and a JCNC with bargaining rights, most schools should have one.
• Ask what the CPD offer looks like in practice through the trust's Professional Development Institute, and whether time is protected for it.

And keep the comparison honest. A Co-op offer will be the same headline number as a maintained school in the same town, because both are paying the national scale. What you are choosing between is the surrounding arrangements — portability, directed time, progression, appeals machinery, union recognition — and on those, this trust has put more in writing than most. Model what any given point is worth after tax, National Insurance and pension with our take-home pay calculator.