How further education college pay works

In short

There is no national pay scale in further education, and no independent pay review body. Each college sets its own pay out of its block funding. The result is a median of about £37,600 for a general FE college teacher against £51,048 in schools – though sixth-form colleges sit far closer to school levels.

How the money is actually decided

School pay is set nationally: the School Teachers’ Review Body makes recommendations, government responds, and pay scales follow. None of that machinery exists in further education. Colleges are independent employers who decide their own pay from the funding they receive.

What the sector has instead is a recommendation. The Association of Colleges negotiates with trade unions and issues a national pay recommendation each year – for 2024/25 it was 2.5% or £750, whichever was greater. A recommendation is not binding, and colleges that cannot afford it do not have to follow it.

Why this is the root of most FE pay stories. When school pay rises through a national award and college pay rises through an affordability-constrained recommendation, the two drift apart structurally – not because of a single decision, but every year, by default.

The size of the gap

On the Department for Education’s own figures, median pay for teaching staff is around £37,600 in general FE colleges and £49,700 in sixth-form colleges, against a school median of £51,048. Independent analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, working from an earlier year, put the gap at roughly £5,500 (15%) in 2023/24 and projected it to widen to almost £7,000 (18%) in 2024/25 – the largest on record.

Don’t stack these numbers. The DfE and IFS figures come from different years, different sources and different definitions of a teacher, so they will not reconcile. Use them for the same conclusion – a large and widening gap – not as a single series.

Sixth-form colleges are the exception

The headline gap is really a general FE college gap. Sixth-form colleges pay close to school levels, which is one reason they are a distinct part of the landscape rather than just another kind of college. See sixth-form college vs school sixth form.

What it does to staffing

Pay is not the only reason people leave, but in FE it is hard to separate from the turnover figures. Fewer than half of those who entered college teaching five years ago are still there, and the IFS notes that almost half of college teachers leave within three years. Colleges are also competing directly with industry salaries in exactly the subjects – engineering, computing, construction – where they most need specialists.

📊 See college pay, vacancies and retention