The gender pay gap between male and female secondary headteachers has grown to the widest point in 12 years, school leaders and experts have warned.
Analysis has revealed that women earned £3,908 less on average than men in 2022-23, and while the gender gap for primary heads is narrowing, it remained £2,181 less, on average, for women last year.
Union leaders have warned that as pay has been “significantly eroded over the last decade”, female heads have suffered “a further ‘double hit’ caused by continued inequalities in the system”.
The analysis of workforce census data - carried out by the NAHT school leaders’ union, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), the National Governance Association (NGA) and WomenEd - has been released on Equal Pay Day in the UK.
The analysis found that the gender pay gap for school leaders begins to increase between the ages 35-39, with the difference in average salaries more than doubling by the next age group (40-44), from £3,596 to £7,819.
And this year, the gender pay difference by age 60 and over for heads reached an average of £15,961.
The analysis of Department for Education data does not provide full-time equivalent figures for part-time staff or a breakdown for full- and part-time staff.
The organisations have now recommended that the government review the equality implications of the current pay system, including the immediate removal of performance-related pay and renewing or replacing the equality, diversity and inclusion hub funding discontinued by the government in 2020.
The groups have recommended greater support to help “mitigate the systemic barriers to flexible working for all roles”.
This includes encouraging better sharing of caring responsibilities through parental leave and for the government to improve their data monitoring to allow monitoring of other pay gaps.
Improving pay gap data
They have also called on the government to improve their data to allow monitoring of other pay gaps, for example by ethnicity or disability.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, said that the teaching profession has a female majority and “it is wrong to see these pay gaps, especially for those who are the most senior”.
“School leaders’ pay has been significantly eroded over the last decade and for female school leaders there is a further ‘double hit’ caused by continued inequalities in the system,” Mr Whiteman said.
Mr Whiteman added that while the pay gap may be even worse for women of colour or those with disabilities, there is still not the national data needed to track this.
Closing gender pay gap ‘is vital’
Vivienne Porritt, global strategic leader of WomenEd, said that there was a “need for schools and trusts to work carefully on ways to reduce their gaps so women educators, and especially leaders, are treated equitably”.
Margaret Mulholland, SEND and inclusion specialist at the ASCL, said that closing the gender pay gap “is vital to improving social equity”.
“Teaching and senior leadership must be compatible with family life - for women and men - if we are ever going to break the cycle of gender inequality. We cannot wait for society to change, we must be the change,” Ms Mulholland added.
Emma Knights, co-chief executive of the NGA, said that boards “are in prime position to effect change by ensuring a healthy organisational culture which is open to giving active, on-consideration to equalities, diversity and inclusion”.
