In 2021, NAHT in partnership with ASCL, NGA and WomenEd released a new report exploring the gender pay gap (the difference between the average pay rate for men and the average pay rate for women) in the English education system.

The report, Closing the Gender Pay Gap in Education: A leadership imperative, was intended to inform debate and highlight areas where action may be needed to ensure that women leaders and educators are valued appropriately and equitably for the work that they do.

Each year since the report’s release, we use the Department for Education’s school workforce statistics to update our analysis, to see if there have been any changes and/or improvements.

What does the picture look like in 2023?

What is NAHT calling for?

NAHT believes more work needs to be done to tackle the gender pay in education, in line with the original recommendations of our ‘Closing the gender pay gap in Education: a leadership imperative’ report.

This includes a series of calls on government including:

• To review the equality implications of the current pay system, including the immediate removal of performance-related pay. 
• To renew or replace the EDI Hub funding, discontinued by the government in 2020. 
• To provide greater support to help mitigate the systemic barriers to flexible working for all roles, including encouraging better sharing of caring responsibilities, e.g. paternal leave.
• And to improve their data monitoring to allow monitoring of other pay gaps, for example ethnicity or disability.

Our work to tackle the gender pay gap in education, forms part of our broader policy and campaigning on members’ pay generally. You can access full details on all of our pay work here.

Download the 2021 report in full.

Read our press release on the 2021 report here.