Is the UK education sector good for women? Pay gap data 2026
Education employs more women than almost any other sector in Britain, and reports one of the widest pay gaps in the country. Those two facts sit together uncomfortably, and understanding why is the whole point of looking at the education gender pay gap honestly.
In the 2025-26 reporting year, the median gender pay gap across 1,906 classified education employers was 20.0%, according to analysis of employer filings to the government’s gender pay gap service. The Office for National Statistics put the UK median gender pay gap at 6.9% for full-time employees and 12.8% across all employees in April 2025. So education, a sector where roughly three in four classroom teachers are women, reports a gap nearly three times the national full-time figure.
Here is what the current data shows, why the gap behaves the way it does, and how to check a specific school, trust, college or university before you take a job there.
What the education gender pay gap looks like in 2026
The education gender pay gap has barely moved in nine years. Employer filings put the sector at 19.1% in 2017-18, peaking at 21.0% between 2020-21 and 2022-23, then easing to 20.2% in 2024-25 and 20.0% in 2025-26. That is a rise of 0.9 percentage points since reporting began, at a time when the national gap has narrowed.
Individual employers vary enormously. Among multi-academy trusts filing for 2025-26, reported median gaps run from close to zero to above 80%. Those extremes are usually a story about workforce composition rather than misconduct, and they are exactly why a sector average is a starting point and not a verdict.
It is worth being precise about what the number measures. A gender pay gap compares the midpoint of what men and women are paid across a whole organisation. Paying a woman less than a man for the same work has been unlawful since the Equal Pay Act 1970, and is now covered by the Equality Act 2010. A pay gap tells you who holds the senior and better-paid roles. Our guide on how to read a company’s gender pay gap figures explains what the median, the mean, the bonus gap and the quartiles each reveal.
Why a workforce that is three quarters women reports a 20% gap
Two things drive it, and neither is about unequal pay for identical jobs.
The first is who runs schools. Department for Education figures for the 2024-25 school year show 75.6% of teachers in state-funded schools in England are women. In secondary schools, only about 36% of headteachers are women, roughly 1,200 out of 3,300. The teaching workforce is overwhelmingly female and the highest-paid leadership layer is not, which is the classic shape of a wide median gap.
The second is who else the employer counts. A multi-academy trust reports on everyone on its payroll, not just teachers. That includes teaching assistants, administrators, catering and cleaning staff, roles that are heavily female and sit at the bottom of the pay structure, alongside a smaller, better-paid and more male-weighted senior leadership group. A trust that brings support services in house will often see its reported gap widen even though nobody’s salary changed.
Part-time work compounds both. Education has one of the highest rates of part-time working of any sector, taken up overwhelmingly by women, and part-time roles cluster below the leadership threshold. Employees in Great Britain have had the right to request flexible working from day one of a job since 6 April 2024, but a right to ask is not the same as a deputy head post that can be done in four days.
Schools, colleges and universities are three different markets
Treating education as one employer type will mislead you.
Higher education reports a noticeably narrower gap. The Universities and Colleges Employers Association, drawing on ONS and Higher Education Statistics Agency data, puts the sector median at roughly 11.5% to 12%, below the sector figure for education as a whole and close to the national all-employee average. The structural problem in universities sits at the top: HESA’s staff statistics for 2024-25, published in February 2026, show 32% of professors in UK higher education are women, a figure that has risen year on year since 2020-21 but still leaves the senior academic grade two thirds male.
Further education colleges sit between the two, with mixed academic and support workforces and tighter pay scales. Independent schools file separately again and often report narrower gaps than trusts of a similar size, largely because their in-scope workforce looks different.
The practical takeaway is that comparing a university against a multi-academy trust tells you almost nothing. Compare like with like, and compare an employer against its own record over three consecutive years.
How to check a school, trust or university before you apply
Four checks give you most of the picture.
Look up the employer yourself. Every employer with 250 or more staff must publish figures on the gov.uk gender pay gap service. Read three years, not one. A gap that moves by ten points in a year usually means a restructure or a change in which staff are counted, not a transformation in culture. Our complete UK guide to gender pay gap reporting explains what employers must publish and when.
Read the quartiles, not just the headline. The four pay quartiles show how men and women are distributed across the pay range. In education the revealing one is the upper quartile. If a trust is 80% female overall and 45% female in its top quartile, you have found the bottleneck.
Ask about the last two leadership rounds. Specifically, what share of appointments to headship, deputy headship, head of department or senior lecturer and above went to women, and how many of those roles are done less than full time. Employers doing this well answer without hesitation, because they already track it.
Test what happens after maternity leave. Ask how many people have returned to a leadership role part time in the past two years. Our guide on returning to work after maternity leave covers what a supportive return actually looks like, and how to ask about flexible working in an interview has wording that gets a straight answer rather than a policy quote.
One more thing worth watching. Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, employers with 250 or more staff are encouraged to publish gender pay gap action plans from April 2026, becoming mandatory in spring 2027. Employers that already have a plan, with named owners and dates, are ahead of the requirement rather than scrambling to meet it.
So, is education a good sector for women?
It depends what you are measuring.
If you want work that is genuinely valued, strong job security, transparent published pay scales and more part-time and term-time options than almost any other sector offers, education holds up well. Classroom pay scales are among the most transparent in the country, which removes a whole category of negotiation disadvantage that women carry elsewhere.
If you want a straight path into senior leadership, the data says you will need to choose your employer with care. A sector that is three quarters female and roughly one third female at secondary headship is not distributing progression evenly. The variation between individual trusts and universities is far wider than the sector average suggests, and that variation is where your decision actually lives.
See how employers score for women on Karrabina’s company gender scorecard.
Frequently asked questions
What is the gender pay gap in the UK education sector?
The education gender pay gap, measured as the median across education employers, was 20.0% in the 2025-26 reporting year, based on filings to the government’s gender pay gap service. That compares with a UK median of 6.9% for full-time employees and 12.8% across all employees in April 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Why is the education gender pay gap so wide when most teachers are women?
Mainly seniority and workforce mix. Around 75.6% of teachers in England’s state-funded schools are women, but only about 36% of secondary headteachers are. Academy trusts also report on support staff such as teaching assistants and catering teams, which are heavily female and lower paid, which widens the reported median further.
Do universities have a smaller gender pay gap than schools?
Generally yes. The higher education sector median sits at roughly 11.5% to 12%, according to the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, against 20.0% for education overall. The gap in universities concentrates at the top, with women holding 32% of professorships in 2024-25 per HESA.
Is a wide gender pay gap the same as unequal pay?
No. Unequal pay for equal work has been unlawful since the Equal Pay Act 1970 and is now covered by the Equality Act 2010. A gender pay gap compares average pay across all men and all women in an organisation, so it reflects how women are distributed across grades rather than whether two people doing the same job are paid differently. Our guide on how to spot a women-friendly employer before you apply covers what to look for beyond the headline number.