The Datum Report

Occupation 2313 · Professional occupations

Secondary education teaching professionals

Half of full-time secondary education teaching professionals in the UK earn more than £47,632 a year, and half earn less.

Secondary (and middle school deemed secondary), and sixth form education teaching professionals plan, organise and provide instruction in one or more subjects, including physical education and diversionary activities, within a prescribed curriculum.

How people enter it

Entry is with a first degree that provides QTS (qualified teacher status) or, in Scotland, TQ (teaching qualification); or other relevant degree followed by further postgraduate training (most commonly PGCE – Postgraduate Certificate in Secondary Education, or, in Scotland, PGDE – Professional Graduate Diploma in Education). Further and higher professional qualifications are required for some teaching posts. A DBS check is mandatory.

What the work involves

• prepares and delivers courses and lessons in accordance with curriculum requirements and teaches one or more subjects
• prepares, assigns and corrects exercises and examinations to record and evaluate students’ progress
• prepares students for external examinations and administers and invigilates these examinations
• maintains records of students’ progress and development
• supervises any practical work and maintains classroom discipline
• undertakes pastoral duties
• supervises teaching assistants and trainees
• discusses progress with student, parents and/or other education professionals
• assists with or plans and develops curriculum and rota of teaching duties

Also called

Curriculum leader (secondary school) · Deputy head teacher (secondary school) · Head of year (secondary school) · Secondary school teacher · Sixth form teacher · Teacher (secondary school)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for secondary education teaching professionals, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 11 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Further education teaching professionals · Higher education teaching professionals · Nursery education teaching professionals · Primary education teaching professionals · Special and additional needs education teaching professionals · Teachers of english as a foreign language · Teaching professionals n.e.c.