The Datum Report

Occupation 4213 · Administrative and secretarial occupations

School secretaries

Half of full-time school secretaries in the UK earn more than £26,463 a year, and half earn less.

School secretaries provide administrative support in schools by keeping and maintaining school records and performing a range of routine clerical tasks within the school.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements, although many employers expect entrants to possess GCSEs/S grades, and professional secretarial courses typically require GCSEs/S grades. NVQs/SVQs in Administration are available at levels 2, 3 and 4.

What the work involves

• sorts, files and otherwise deals with incoming and outgoing correspondence
• types directly or transcribes letters, reports and other documents, and prints or photocopies documents as required
• maintains administrative records relating to pupils and staff, and generates statistical and other reports
• handles enquiries from parents and arranges meetings with members of staff
• undertakes reception duties for visitors, handles face-to-face and telephone enquiries and passes on messages
• orders equipment and stationery
• arranges payment of invoices, handles cash

Also called

Administration assistant (schools) · Clerical assistant (schools) · School administrator · School secretary · Secretary (schools)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for school secretaries, 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. 8 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

Company secretaries and administrators · Legal secretaries · Medical secretaries · Personal assistants and other secretaries · Receptionists · Typists and related keyboard occupations