Nova Education Trust Teacher Pay (2026/27)

Nova Education Trust is one of the less-scrutinised multi-academy trusts covered on this site. It has not run a branded above-scale pay campaign, it has not been the subject of a strike ballot or an Education Uncovered investigation, and its own public materials read like a fairly typical large regional trust: a warm case for culture and staff voice, a benefits scheme, and no bespoke pay scale to hold up against the national one. That combination usually means a page like this has little new to report. What it does have is a genuinely specific, checkable structural detail — the distinction between Nova's directly-held academies and its Leicester "partner schools" — and a career-development offer, built around its own teacher-training provider and a set of named external partnerships, that is more concrete than most trusts publish.

This page sets out what Nova actually pays, based on its own published statements and live recruitment evidence rather than promotional copy, what the trust's own structure tells you about who your actual employer would be, what the pension and benefits position is, and what we could not verify and are flagging rather than guessing at.

What Nova Education Trust actually is

Nova Education Trust is an exempt charitable company limited by guarantee, incorporated on 16 May 2011 and headquartered at the Sir Colin Campbell Building on the University of Nottingham Innovation Park, Triumph Road, Nottingham. It is led by chief executive Ashfaq Rahman OBE, supported by a vice CEO, a chief financial and operations officer, and separate directors of school improvement for the primary and secondary phases. The trust's schools sit mainly in and around Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, with a further cluster around Mansfield and Warsop, one school in Derbyshire, and a sixth form college in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire.

Financially, the trust's most recent DfE-published data — covering the September 2024 to August 2025 academies accounts return — shows an in-year balance of £2,727,000 and a revenue reserve of £10,153,000, figures that put it in a reasonably comfortable financial position relative to many trusts of a similar size. That data comes from the Department for Education's own Financial Benchmarking and Insights Tool rather than from Nova's promotional material, which is why we are citing it separately.

Member schools and partner schools

This is the single most useful structural fact on this page, and it is worth reading carefully if you are applying to any school that describes itself as part of the "Nova family".

Nova's own Family page states: "Our family is currently made up of 19 academies (six primaries, 12 secondaries and one sixth form college), which includes our two partner schools in the Madani Schools Federation in Leicester." The Department for Education's own register of academy trust groups lists Nova Education Trust (UID 5084, company number 07635510) as running 17 academies — a figure independently corroborated by the DfE's Financial Benchmarking and Insights Tool, which shows the same 17 schools broken down as 6 primary, 10 secondary and one post-16 provider (Melton Vale Sixth Form College).

Put those two sources together and the arithmetic is consistent: Nova's own count of 12 "secondaries" is 10 schools that are formally, legally part of the Nova Education Trust multi-academy trust, plus two secondary schools that belong to a separately named organisation, the Madani Schools Federation in Leicester, with which Nova has a partnership arrangement rather than outright legal membership. The Herewoode Academy, also in Leicester, is a directly-held Nova academy and is distinct from the two Madani partner schools.

National STPCD pay, not a distinct scale

We looked for evidence that Nova Education Trust runs its own pay scale, in the way United Learning runs its PT and EPT bands, or that it adds a flat allowance on top of the national scale, in the way Harris Federation does. We found neither. Nova's own careers page states that its equal-opportunities commitment applies "in the application of national and local agreements in respect of pay and conditions of service" — the language of a trust implementing the nationally negotiated position, not one operating a bespoke structure of its own.

Live recruitment evidence points the same way. A Teacher of Chemistry vacancy at Melton Vale Sixth Form College, live at the time of writing, was advertised at a salary range of £34,069 to £52,835. That is not an approximate match to the national scale — it is exact, to the pound, against the current national M1 and U3 points used elsewhere on this site for the 2026/27 pay year. A trust quietly paying above the national rate would ordinarily show up in the advertised figures as a round number that does not line up precisely with the STPCD points; here, it lines up exactly.

What live vacancies actually pay

Because Nova does not publish a distinct pay policy or Annex-style comparison document of the kind United Learning does, the most reliable current evidence of what the trust actually pays is what it advertises. Here is what was live on the DfE's Teaching Vacancies service and on Indeed at the time of writing:

• Teacher of Chemistry, Melton Vale Sixth Form College — advertised at £34,069 to £52,835, quoted as "MPS1 to UPS3", the full national Main and Upper Pay Range span.
• Assistant Head Teacher (Quality of Education), Nottingham University Samworth Academy — advertised at Scale L11 to L15, £68,691 to £75,664, which sits within the national Leadership Group 3 band of £68,691 to £93,414 used elsewhere on this site.
• Trust Safeguarding Officer — advertised at SO2, £37,280 to £39,153, a support-staff post rather than a teaching one, but useful evidence that central-team roles are also being recruited on standard local-government-style scales rather than a bespoke Nova scale.
• Lead Governance Professional — advertised at PO1 (points 29–33), £39,863 to £44,075.
• Recruitment Coordinator — advertised at Scale 5, £28,598 to £31,022.

None of these figures are Nova-specific uplifts; each maps onto a recognisable national or local-government pay point structure. One teaching advert we found did note that a TLR would be "negotiable", which is standard STPCD practice — the cash value of a TLR is set within the national ranges but the exact figure within that range is a local decision at every school and trust, not something distinctive to Nova.

You can model exactly what any of these figures is worth in take-home terms with our take-home pay calculator, and see how a specific point translates onto the current national scale with our pay point calculator.

Leadership pay and TLRs

The Assistant Head Teacher advert above is worth a moment of its own, because it is a useful example of how leadership pay actually works at a trust that has not published its own leadership pay policy. Every leadership post in an English school — assistant head, deputy head or headteacher — has to sit within the single national Leadership Group pay range for the relevant school size, and the individual points within it, labelled L1 upward, are set by the school's own governing body or trust within that band. The £68,691–£75,664 range quoted for a Samworth Academy assistant head role corresponds closely to the lower end of the national Group 3 headteacher band, which is a plausible and unremarkable position for a large secondary academy — nothing about it suggests Nova is deviating from the national leadership framework.

Teaching and Learning Responsibility payments work the same way: Nova's adverts describe TLRs as "negotiable" within the standard national bands — TLR1 £10,531–£17,819, TLR2 £3,651–£8,913 and TLR3 £727–£3,600 — rather than against any Nova-specific responsibility scale. If you are offered a post with a TLR attached, the sensible question is simply where within the national band the school has set the figure, and whether that is confirmed in writing.

Pension: the standard Teachers' Pension Scheme

Nova's own careers page is direct about this: "All staff are auto-enrolled into the relevant pension scheme. LGPS for support staff and Teachers Pension for teaching staff." That is the standard, unmodified Teachers' Pension Scheme available across the maintained sector and at the large majority of academy trusts — a career-average, defined-benefit scheme with an employer contribution and guaranteed, inflation-linked income in retirement, described in full in our guide to the 2015 scheme. We found no evidence of any alternative or supplementary pension arrangement at Nova, and no indication that it has ever proposed one — a contrast worth noting against the abandoned defined-contribution proposal reported at United Learning in 2025. Confirm TPS membership on standard terms in writing at offer stage regardless, as with any trust.

Nova Perks and the rest of the package

Nova launched a staff benefits scheme called Nova Perks in September 2022, and its careers page sets out what it includes in some detail:

• Bike Scheme, Technology Scheme and Car Salary Sacrifice — the standard family of salary-sacrifice schemes that reduce the effective cost of a bicycle, electronics or a car by taking the payment from gross rather than net pay.
• Health Cash Plan and Gym Scheme — money back towards routine healthcare costs, and a discounted or subsidised gym membership route.
• Instant Discounts, Motorsave, Lifestyle Benefits and a Savings Club — a retail and lifestyle discount platform of the kind most large trusts now offer.
• Workplace ISAs and Financial Planning support, alongside Healthy Living and Financial Education resource modules — a slightly broader financial-wellbeing offer than most trust benefits pages publish.
• Liftshare and Peer-to-Peer recognition, plus up to one paid "Nova Perk Day" a year on top of standard leave, which the trust states "can be taken for any chosen reason and does not need to have a defined purpose".
• A "generous" service-related sick pay entitlement — the trust states this exists but does not publish the specific bands, so ask for the actual policy if this matters to you.

None of these individually carry a large cash value, and a "Perks" scheme of this kind is now close to standard across the sector rather than a genuine differentiator. Taken as a whole, though, it is a reasonably broad and specific package, and the flexible, no-questions-asked Perk Day is a small but real point in the trust's favour that not every trust matches.

CPD and career development

This is where Nova has the most genuine case to make, and it is worth setting out properly because it is more concrete than the equivalent section on many trust pages.

Nova runs its own School Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) provider, Nottinghamshire Torch SCITT, which its careers page describes as "innovation award-winning", alongside a team dedicated specifically to Early Career Teacher support — on top of, rather than instead of, the statutory ECF entitlement every school must provide. The trust states it supports staff to engage with National Professional Qualifications and postgraduate study, and names a specific set of external partners it works through to deliver this: the University of Nottingham, the Confederation of School Trusts, the Ambition Institute and the National Association for School-Based Teacher Trainers. Those are all real, recognised bodies in English teacher CPD and ITT — see our guide to NPQs for what the national qualifications route actually involves and what it costs — and naming them by name, rather than describing "outstanding CPD" in the abstract, is more verifiable than most trusts manage.

Nova also states it has international partnerships through COBIS, a network of British international schools, and with Jyväskylä University's teacher training provision in Finland — offering, on the trust's own account, opportunities for wider professional networking beyond England. We could not independently verify the current depth or activity level of either international partnership, so treat this as a claimed rather than confirmed benefit, but it is a distinctive one if genuine, and worth asking about directly if international CPD exposure matters to you.

Ofsted outcomes across the family

Nova's own Family page states that "87% of our academies are now judged by Ofsted as Good or Outstanding." We checked this against Ofsted's own published report list for the trust's 17 directly-held academies. Of the schools with a current single-word judgement, the large majority are rated Good, with Melton Vale Sixth Form College rated Outstanding at its most recent inspection (March 2023). A smaller number of schools — including Kirk Hallam Community Academy and Victoria Primary School — carry a "Not Judged" outcome from ungraded inspections, and a handful of more recently converted or re-brokered academies, including Birklands Academy, Forest Town Primary School, Robert Miles Infant School and The Herewoode Academy, do not yet carry a published single-word rating under Nova at all. Set against that mix, the trust's 87% figure is broadly consistent with what Ofsted's own report service shows, though the precise percentage depends on exactly how "Not Judged" and not-yet-inspected schools are treated in the denominator, which Nova's own page does not spell out.

We found no record of any Nova academy being placed in special measures or rebrokered away from the trust in the period covered by this research — a materially different recent history from, for example, Greenwood Academies Trust's 2016/17 Ofsted period. As always with a multi-school trust, an aggregate figure tells you about the trust, not about the specific school you are applying to — check that school's own most recent report on Ofsted's report service directly.

What it's like to work at Nova

Independent, external evidence about working life at Nova is genuinely thin, and we would rather say so plainly than pad this section out. We could not find a Nova Education Trust profile on Glassdoor at all. Indeed shows just three reviews in total, giving an overall rating of 3.7, with pay and benefits rated 5.0 and work-life balance also rated 5.0 — figures that read positively but come from far too small a sample to draw a confident conclusion about a trust running 17 or more schools. One of the three reviews, from a finance administration assistant, specifically noted good holiday and compassionate-leave provision but flagged that pro-rata pay "can be low for responsibility" and that duties can extend beyond the stated job role — a fairly ordinary observation about school-based administrative work rather than evidence of a systemic problem.

Nova's own careers page describes running an internal "Stakeholder Voice" staff survey with Edurio, most recently in January 2025, benchmarked against national data drawn from more than 69,000 staff members across other organisations using the same platform. The page states the results "show that Nova staff are" positive on a number of measures, but the actual scores and descriptive text were not present in the page content we could extract, so we cannot report a specific figure — only that the trust says it runs this survey and benchmarks it externally, which is a genuinely good practice if the results are shared transparently with staff.

What we couldn't verify

• Well evidenced: that Nova does not run a distinct, above-scale pay structure — from its own careers page language and from a live vacancy advertised at exactly the national M1–U3 range.
• Well evidenced: the Teachers' Pension Scheme for teaching staff and the Local Government Pension Scheme for support staff, stated directly on Nova's own careers page.
• Well evidenced: the Nova Perks benefits scheme and its contents, from Nova's own published careers page.
• Well evidenced: the 17-academy legal footprint (DfE GIAS register and Financial Benchmarking and Insights Tool) versus the 19-academy "family" including two Madani Schools Federation partner schools (Nova's own Family page).
• Well evidenced: the trust's financial position for the 2024/25 accounts year (£2,727,000 in-year balance, £10,153,000 revenue reserve), from the DfE's own benchmarking tool.
• Reported by third-party aggregators but not confirmed on Nova's current site: total pupil numbers ("over 11,500") and total staff numbers ("more than 1,400"). We could not locate these figures in Nova's own current published materials to confirm them directly.
• Claimed by the trust but not independently confirmed by us: the specific results of its January 2025 Edurio staff survey, and the current activity level of its COBIS and Jyväskylä University international CPD partnerships.

• Not found: any published Nova Education Trust teachers' pay policy or directed-time/conditions of service document.
• Not found: a current chief executive salary figure from Nova's most recent published accounts — we could not access the trust's annual report or executive pay documents directly.
• Not found: a Glassdoor profile for Nova Education Trust.
• Not verified: whether the £34,069–£52,835 and other advertised figures cited on this page remain live by the time you read this — always check a current listing.

What changes under the 2026 Act

The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 requires academies to have regard to the STPCD and introduces a statutory minimum pay floor set by reference to it, alongside extending the School Teachers' Review Body's remit to cover academies directly. Section 59 and Schedule 3 commenced on 29 June 2026, which gives the Secretary of State the power to make a minimum remuneration order, but academies are not actually required to pay the floor until that order is made — which the Department for Education has said will happen no earlier than September 2026, and which had not happened at the time of writing. A government amendment during the bill's passage confirmed the Act sets a floor, not a ceiling.

For a trust already paying the standard national scale with no distinct uplift, like Nova, this provision changes very little in practical terms — it already clears any floor set with reference to the STPCD by construction, since it appears to already pay the STPCD directly. The more relevant question, as with any trust that does not publish its own pay or conditions policy, is what "having regard to" the whole STPCD — including its conditions and directed-time provisions — will mean once the relevant statutory guidance is published, since that is the part of the framework Nova's public materials say least about.

How to check before you apply

None of the following questions is awkward, and a trust with nothing to hide should answer all of them without difficulty.

• Ask exactly which pay point you are being offered, not just "MPS/UPS" — the range from M1 to U3 covers a spread of almost £19,000, and this page shows Nova's adverts do quote the full national scale rather than a translated equivalent.
• If the school is in Leicester, ask which trust would actually employ you — Nova Education Trust itself, or the Madani Schools Federation as a partner organisation — since that determines whose pay policy, HR team and central contract terms actually apply.
• Confirm the Teachers' Pension Scheme in writing, on standard terms with standard employer contributions.
• Ask how TLRs are set at the specific school if one is attached to your post — Nova's adverts describe them as negotiable within the national bands, so ask where in the band the figure has actually been set.
• Ask what the school's current relationship with the Nottinghamshire Torch SCITT, NPQ funding and named CPD partners actually looks like in practice — a trust-level partnership does not automatically mean every school uses it actively.
• Check the specific academy's current Ofsted report yourself on Ofsted's report service, rather than relying on the trust's 87% headline figure, since a handful of Nova schools carry no current single-word judgement at all.
• Ask whether there is a recognised union representative at the school, and speak to them directly — this is the best available substitute for the review-site data this page could not find in any meaningful volume.

Taken as a whole, Nova Education Trust looks like a fairly typical large East Midlands multi-academy trust on the pay side — no headline uplift, no penalty, standard pension, standard national scale. What makes it worth checking carefully before you apply is the family-versus-partner-school distinction in Leicester, which affects who your actual employer would be, and the trust's genuinely more specific-than-average CPD offer, which is worth testing against the reality at your particular school rather than taking on trust from the careers page alone.