Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic MAT Teacher Pay (2026/27)

What this page is and isn't

This is a profile about an employer in dispute, not a pay-scale analysis, and the evidence behind it is unevenly distributed in a way worth naming up front.

The support staff half is well documented. UNISON ran a public campaign with a published ballot result, named schools, dated strike days, a specific claim about what members stood to lose and a settlement it announced in detail. Local and trade press covered it throughout. If you are a teaching assistant, administrator or chaplaincy worker at this trust, there is a real public record to read.

The teacher half is narrower, but it is not absent, and it is the reason this page is worth writing. NASUWT — which represents teachers specifically — balloted and struck at two named schools over named numbers of teaching posts, published its case with quotes from its general secretary, and then, crucially, stated after the support staff settlement that its own members remained in dispute. That is the single most teacher-relevant finding here, and the section below treats it as such rather than burying it in the UNISON story.

What this page cannot do is tell you what the trust pays at each point on the scale. We found no published Our Lady of Lourdes teachers' pay policy, no appraisal or progression policy, no directed time policy and no union recognition agreement in the public domain. Where a fact is a union's account rather than an independently verifiable one, this page says so. Where the record simply stops — and on the teacher dispute it does — it says that too.

What the trust is — and it isn't eight schools

Correct this first, because almost every secondary account of the dispute gets it wrong. Eight is the number of schools in the restructure and the UNISON dispute. It is not the size of the trust.

Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Multi-Academy Trust is company number 07743523, registered at Loxley House on Tottle Road in Nottingham. The DfE's Get Information About Schools register lists 36 open academies under it — the large majority primaries, with six secondaries including The Becket School, The Trinity Catholic School, Christ the King, All Saints', St Bede's and St Peter and St Paul. The estate spans Nottingham city, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire and one school in Derbyshire. The trust reached that size on 1 September 2022, when the Lincolnshire Catholic schools joined what had been a Nottinghamshire trust.

The chief executive, who is also the accounting officer, is James McGeachie.

Every one of those locations sits in the national (rest of England) pay area. There is no London or fringe weighting anywhere in this trust, so a salary here should be read against the national STPCD points — £34,069 at M1, £46,940 at M6 and £52,835 at U3 for 2026/27 — and the trust competes for staff against maintained schools and other East Midlands trusts on exactly those rates. Model what any of them is worth in the hand with our take-home pay calculator.

The link to St Ralph Sherwin

Readers who arrive here from our St Ralph Sherwin profile will have noticed the overlap, and it is real rather than coincidental. Here is what the connection is, and what it is not.

• Shared diocesan origin. Both trusts were created by the Diocese of Nottingham and operate under its patronage, alongside the diocese's other Catholic multi-academy trusts. Both are overseen by the Nottingham Roman Catholic Diocesan Education Service.
• Complementary geography. Our Lady of Lourdes covers Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire; St Ralph Sherwin covers Derbyshire and parts of East Staffordshire. They do not compete for the same schools.
• A genuinely joint industrial dispute. UNISON balloted members across both trusts together. The combined dispute covered 22 schools in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, and the first strike days — 24 and 25 March 2026 — were the same for both. Ballot results were reported as 98 per cent at Our Lady of Lourdes and 94 per cent at St Ralph Sherwin.

• Not a merger, and not a shared board. They are separate legal entities, each a company limited by guarantee with its own board of directors, its own accounting officer and its own accounts. The diocese's own published statement makes the point explicitly: it created the trusts but they are separate legal entities, "it is the Board of Directors that has responsibility for operational and financial matters", and the diocese is "not able to intervene directly into operational matters, which include financial decision-making".
• Not a shared financial position — the opposite, in fact. In the same financial year, St Ralph Sherwin held revenue reserves of minus £9,199,000 — the largest academy trust deficit in England — while Our Lady of Lourdes held £5,691,000 in the black. Do not read across from one to the other.

The practical upshot is that the two trusts faced a common pressure — falling rolls in Catholic primary schools across the East Midlands, and a diocese that has said publicly it cannot use Church assets or parish income to fund state education — and responded with restructures at similar times, which a single union then contested jointly. That is a shared problem and a shared opponent, not a shared organisation.

The money: £5,691,000 in reserves, and growing

This is where the Our Lady of Lourdes story diverges sharply from every other deficit-driven restructure profiled on this site, and it is the fact that made the dispute so bitter.

The DfE's financial benchmarking and insights tool records, for the year September 2024 to August 2025, revenue reserves of £5,691,000 and an in-year balance of plus £2,477,000. In plain terms: the trust was several million pounds in surplus, and it added nearly £2.5 million to that surplus during the very year in which it went on to propose the cuts. NASUWT made precisely this argument in public, citing the £5.69 million figure against the trust's case for reductions, and the departmental data confirms the union's number exactly.

The trust's position, as reported by Schools Week on 23 March 2026, was narrower than "we have no money". James McGeachie said the chain was working with its academies to improve their finances, and that it had "a small number" of schools, mostly with falling rolls, where savings "have not been high enough". The consultation was on "new staffing structures for these schools", to bring employee numbers "more in line" with levels recommended by the Department for Education.

The restructure and the joint ballot

The teacher side: NASUWT at two schools

This is the section that matters most if you are a teacher, and it is the part of the story that the wider coverage largely passed over.

On 23 March 2026 NASUWT published its announcement of strike action at Nottingham and Lincolnshire schools. Its members — teachers, not support staff — struck on 24 and 25 March 2026, the same two days as UNISON but as a separate dispute, at two named primaries:

Those are small absolute numbers, and that is exactly the point about primary schools: 2.5 FTE out of a small primary staff is a significant proportion of the teaching body, and the loss falls on a school where there is no large department to absorb it. The union's two published quotes set out the case. General secretary Matt Wrack said: "Teachers make the biggest difference to the quality of children's education and their jobs should be protected and prioritised by the Trust." National executive member Anne Thompson made the workload argument: "Cuts to staffing will inevitably drive up teachers' workloads, reducing the amount of time they have to focus on meeting pupils' needs." The same NASUWT material cited the trust's £5.69 million reserves against the proposals.

It is worth understanding why the teacher and support staff disputes ran on different tracks, because the pattern repeats across the sector. Teachers' pay is governed by the STPCD — a statutory national framework with defined ranges, defined allowances and, from 2026, a statutory floor for academies. Support staff are typically on NJC Green Book terms, where grading, hours and working patterns are locally set and therefore locally changeable. When a school needs to find savings, the terms it can move fastest are the ones nobody has fixed for it nationally. So the support staff threat took the form of regrading and a 20 per cent income cut, while the teacher threat took the only form it really can — redundancy, and the workload consequences for whoever remains.

What the settlement delivered, and for whom

Read honestly, that is a support staff win and a teacher question mark. The one thing worth adding in the trust's favour is that it settled rather than dug in: a dispute that ran from March to a negotiated agreement in May, with part of the cuts reversed and redeployment offered, is a materially better outcome than a trust forcing through a restructure over a 98 per cent ballot. Whether the same flexibility was extended on the teaching side is precisely what the public record does not say.

What this means for teacher pay

Here is the position stated as narrowly as the evidence allows.

On the base scale. We could not find a published Our Lady of Lourdes teachers' pay policy, appraisal policy or pay progression policy anywhere in the public domain, and no union account of one. All 36 schools are in the national pay area, there is no evidence of a bespoke trust scale, and nothing in the dispute coverage suggests the trust departs from the STPCD. The working assumption should therefore be the standard national points — but it is an assumption, and it should be confirmed in writing rather than believed.

On the real risk. The teacher-specific exposure at this trust is not the headline rate. It is job security at falling-roll primaries, and the knock-on effects of a staffing reduction on the people who remain. That shows up in three places on a teacher's terms:

• Redundancy itself. Cuts of 2.5 and 1.03 FTE were proposed at two named schools, and NASUWT's position in May 2026 was that compulsory redundancies remained possible. Our guide to teacher redundancy pay sets out how consultation, selection and statutory pay work, and what the Burgundy Book adds.
• Responsibility payments. A restructure is the mechanism by which a TLR can lawfully be removed — not because the employer wants to pay less, but because the responsibility itself is deleted. TLR1 runs from £10,531 to £17,819 and TLR2 from £3,651 to £8,913, so this is not a marginal sum. Our TLR guide explains the bands and the safeguarding rules.
• Workload. Anne Thompson's point for NASUWT — that staffing cuts drive up the workload of those who remain — is the effect with no cash value on a payslip and the largest effect on whether a job is sustainable. It is also the one thing no settlement reliably fixes.

The other pay-adjacent point specific to this trust is that the cuts fell heavily on teaching assistants and chaplaincy staff. For a classroom teacher, particularly in a primary with SEND pupils, fewer TAs is a direct workload transfer. That is the clearest practical link between a support staff dispute and a teacher's working life, and it is why the UNISON half of this story is worth a teacher's attention even though it is not about teachers' pay.

What's verified and what isn't

• Well evidenced: the trust's financial position — £5,691,000 in revenue reserves and an in-year balance of plus £2,477,000 for the year to 31 August 2025 — directly checkable on the DfE's financial benchmarking tool under company number 07743523, and matching the figure NASUWT cited publicly.
• Well evidenced: the trust's size and composition — 36 open academies across Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and one Derbyshire school — from Get Information About Schools and the trust's own material.
• Well evidenced: the NASUWT strike — 24 and 25 March 2026, at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour in Nottingham and Our Lady of Good Counsel in Sleaford, over 1.03 and 2.5 FTE reductions — because NASUWT published it in its own dated announcement with named officials and direct quotes.
• Well evidenced: the chief executive's stated rationale — a consultation on new staffing structures at a small number of falling-roll schools where savings "have not been high enough", to bring staffing "more in line" with DfE-recommended levels — reported by Schools Week on 23 March 2026.
• Well evidenced: the joint UNISON ballot across Our Lady of Lourdes and St Ralph Sherwin covering 22 schools, the 98 per cent result at this trust, and the 24-25 March strike dates, reported contemporaneously across several outlets.
• Well evidenced: that the two trusts are separate legal entities with separate boards, both created by and under the patronage of the Diocese of Nottingham — stated in the diocese's own published position.

• Not found: any published Our Lady of Lourdes teachers' pay policy, appraisal policy, pay progression policy, directed time policy or trade union recognition agreement. This is the central gap and the reason this page cannot tell you what the trust pays at each point.
• Not known: how the NASUWT dispute ended, or whether it ended. The last established position is mid-May 2026, with the union stating its members remained in dispute over possible compulsory redundancies and workload. No settlement, further ballot or resolution was reported anywhere we could find.
• Not established: how many teaching posts were ultimately lost, at these two schools or across the eight in consultation. The proposals were published; the outcomes were not.
• Reported by UNISON but not independently verified: the "up to 20 per cent of wages" figure and the contents of the 12-point plan. Both come from the union's own account of proposals and of a settlement; neither the original proposals nor the agreement appear to have been published by the trust.
• Not verified: anything about base pay above the national scale, TLR values, SEN allowances, pay portability, directed time, PPA or workload at this trust. We have no evidence either way and are not going to infer any.
• Not found: any DfE notice to improve or financial notice to improve for this trust, and no indication of any proposal to transfer or rebroker its schools. On the published record it is not under formal intervention — a genuine and important difference from St Ralph Sherwin.

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 academies. 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 different provision of the same Act — QTS becoming a requirement in academies. A government amendment during the bill's passage confirmed the floor is a floor and not a ceiling. Our guide to the academy pay floor sets out what the duty does and does not cover.

For a trust that publishes no pay policy, the floor is useful: it converts an assumption that the national scale applies into a legal minimum, without the employer having to say anything. But the Act's limits matter more here than at most trusts, because the dispute at Our Lady of Lourdes was never about the rate. It was about how many posts exist and what non-teaching staff are graded at. A statutory pay floor does not stop a restructure, does not preserve a post, does not protect a TLR attached to a deleted responsibility, and reaches support staff terms not at all — those sit under the NJC Green Book, outside the Act entirely. Everything that was actually fought over in spring 2026 would still have been fought over with the floor in force.

How to check before you apply

None of these are awkward questions, and a school that answers them straight is telling you something good about itself. The first one does most of the work.

• Ask whether this school was one of the eight in the 2026 restructure consultation, and if so what the outcome was — how many posts went, whether anyone was redeployed, and whether the structure has now settled. Thirty-six schools were not affected equally.
• Ask specifically whether the NASUWT dispute has been resolved. The public record stops in May 2026 with the union still in dispute over possible compulsory redundancies. The school will know; we could not find out.
• Ask for the current teachers' pay policy in writing, with its approval date, and check the figures against the current national points rather than assuming they are up to date. We could not find one published.
• Ask whether pay progression is automatic or performance-gated, and whether your existing pay point will be matched on joining. Both are discretionary for academies and neither is published here.
• If the post carries a TLR, get the band, the value and the responsibility in writing, and ask whether responsibility payments were in scope in the restructure.
• Ask what happened to teaching assistant and chaplaincy staffing at this school. The support staff cuts were the largest part of the proposals, and TA numbers are a direct workload issue for the class teacher.
• Ask about the school's roll trajectory — whether numbers are falling, and by how much. Falling rolls were the trust's stated reason for the whole exercise, and they are a leading indicator of the next restructure.
• Ask what the central top-slice is and whether the trust's reserves are available to support schools carrying a temporary roll dip. This was the crux of the dispute and it is a fair thing to ask an employer to explain.
• Confirm the pension scheme and employer contribution in the offer letter — Teachers' Pension Scheme on standard terms for teaching posts, Local Government Pension Scheme for support posts, employer contribution at the current 28.68 per cent rate.
• Talk to the NASUWT or UNISON rep at the school. After a strike there will be one, and they will have a far more precise view of where the dispute actually landed than any published source.

A closing point of fairness. This is not a trust in crisis. It has no deficit, no notice to improve, no regulatory intervention and no proposal to break it up; it has a healthy balance sheet and 36 schools, the large majority of which were never touched by any of this. What it has is one contested restructure at a handful of falling-roll schools, which its support staff fought and substantially won, and a teacher dispute that the public record leaves unfinished. Those are two quite different things to know about an employer, and both are worth knowing before you sign.