The Datum Report

Occupation 2315 · Professional occupations

Nursery education teaching professionals

Half of full-time nursery education teaching professionals in the UK earn more than £37,593 a year, and half earn less.

Nursery education teaching professionals care for and teach children up to the age of entry into primary school.

How people enter it

Entrants will usually possess a relevant degree or postgraduate qualification or relevant experience. Early years teacher status or equivalent is required. A DBS check is mandatory.

What the work involves

• prepares and delivers lessons in accordance with early years foundation stages curriculum and encourages and stimulates children's learning
• teaches simple songs and rhymes, reads stories and organises various activities to promote language, social and physical development
• supervises and cares for children, provides a secure learning environment and ensures their health and safety is maintained during all activities
• undertakes pastoral duties
• supervises teaching assistants and trainees
• observes and assesses students and discusses their progress with parents and/or other education professionals
• assists with or plans and develops curriculum and rota of teaching duties

Also called

Kindergarten teacher (professional) · Nursery school teacher · Pre-school teacher

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for nursery 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. 1 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 · Primary education teaching professionals · Secondary education teaching professionals · Special and additional needs education teaching professionals · Teachers of english as a foreign language · Teaching professionals n.e.c.