Salary Story: Taking An £18k Pay Cut Was The Best Thing I Did For My Career
In our series Salary Stories, women with long-term career experience open up about the most intimate details of their jobs: compensation. It’s an honest look at how real people navigate the complicated world of negotiating, raises, promotions and job loss, with the hope it will give young women more insight into how to advocate for themselves — and maybe take a few risks along the way.
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Age: 26 Location: Cheltenham Current industry and job title: EHC plan coordinator for a local authority special needs team in education Current salary: £37,500 Number of years employed since school or university: Six
Starting salary: £22,917 in 2017 Biggest salary jump: From £17,500 to £37,500 in 2022 Biggest salary drop: From £30,599 in 2020 to £12,000 in 2021
Biggest negotiation regret: I worked in a primary school and in my second year I became head of English. This involved lots of extra work as we were entirely redesigning the way the school taught English. At the time, I had no idea how teaching pay worked so when the headteacher offered to move me two points up the pay scale (which at the time, meant I would be going up from £28,413 to only £30,599). I said YES!
What I didn’t know was that there are extra payments called TLRs for people taking on the amount of extra work and responsibility that I was. I was so thrilled to be getting a little extra money that I didn’t investigate further, or question why the senior leadership team was so keen to agree to me moving up the pay scale… It was to save them money!
Looking back, I wish I had more information about how pay scales worked — but these things aren’t taught to you; you kind of muddle along in the dark until someone else explains it. Those above should be more transparent, but I also wish I had been less naive and more proactive.
Best salary advice: At some point, the “good” salary you are on becomes a “bad” salary if you are working 60+ hours to make it and none of that extra work is recognised or rewarded.
This was my first job in education after graduating. Subject to successful performance management reviews, teachers go up the main pay scale (which has six points) each year. After the sixth point, to get onto the upper pay scale, you often have to demonstrate that you are making a significant contribution to school life beyond what is usually expected. You can negotiate which pay point you are on, but this all depends on school budgets, your overall contribution to school life and lots of other politics: I didn’t even know I could negotiate at this point, so I didn’t. In 2018, I was automatically moved up to £25,594 without negotiation. This year, I jumped from point two on the pay scale to point four, as I had excellent results and had been made head of English. I didn’t negotiate this myself as I didn’t know I could negotiate: Instead, the headteacher offered it to me and I snapped up the offer. I didn’t realise that there were additional payments for leadership roles such as mine at the time, and therefore, although it looked like I was being given a raise, for the extra hours of work (and whole staff training, school improvement plans, and extra meetings), I was very much being shortchanged. But I was young and so keen to advance my career that I didn’t look closely at the reality. Disillusioned with all of the extra hours that teachers do without being compensated or recognised (I’m talking 70-hour weeks for my £30K, working on the weekends, never switching off…), I returned to university as a mature student to do a master’s degree in psychology. This is part of a long-term plan to train to be an educational psychologist. I got a post-grad loan to pay for the course, and worked two part-time jobs to cover my rent, food and bills. It was a tricky time but I feel the risk was 100% worth it for the future opportunities having the degree could offer. As I want to work in educational psychology and my experience so far had been in mainstream school, I wanted experience in a special setting. I knew it would be very tricky to secure a teaching post without any special school teaching experience, so I used my previous job as a learning disabilities support worker to put together an application for a support role. The job had been fantastic in developing my skills and knowledge so, although the pay was low in relation to my experience, qualifications, and earning potential, again I think the long-term pay off will be worth it. I had my Google Alerts set for a range of different job roles in education that would suit my skills, experience and qualifications. When this role came up, it sounded perfect for me as it would allow me to use my skills and knowledge around special educational needs as well as giving me a greater understanding of the legislative, administration side of things. The hiring manager told me that my experience in social care and special school settings was instrumental to me getting the job: My short-term pay cut had resulted in a long-term better opportunity.
I am in a better position than I would have been had I stayed in teaching: At this point, I would have been on the sixth point on the pay scale, earning £36,961 for my 70+ hour week. Now, I earn more than that for 37 hours, in a job that will also help me work towards my future aspirations. For me, I’ve learned that taking a drop in salary to do further study and gain invaluable experience is a risk that can be worth taking – however scary it feels!
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