For any organisation with more than a handful of employees, the question of how to structure pay is one of the most consequential decisions a manager or business owner will make. A well-designed pay structure provides a consistent, defensible basis for compensation—one that employees can understand and that holds up to scrutiny during performance reviews, disputes, or equal pay audits.
In sectors such as education, where pay is governed by nationally agreed frameworks, this structure takes on added significance. Managing teacher pay scales, spine points, and annual uplifts demands both a clear understanding of the rules and a reliable process for applying them accurately.
This guide sets out the main types of pay structures used across UK organisations, explains how education pay scales are constructed, and outlines what the 2025/26 pay award means in practice.
What Is a Pay Structure—and Why Does It Matter?
A pay structure is a formal framework that sets out how employee compensation is determined and how it may change over time. Rather than negotiating individual salaries in isolation, a pay structure creates consistent rules applied across job roles, grades, or departments.
At its core, every pay structure contains pay scales—defined ranges within which salaries sit, typically built around three reference points:
- A minimum — the starting point for a role or grade
- A midpoint — often aligned to market averages
- A maximum — the ceiling within that grade or band
The percentage difference between the minimum and maximum is called the span of the pay band. A wider span means greater scope for pay progression within a single grade; a narrower span means employees will move to higher grades more quickly.
Beyond these basics, pay structures are differentiated by two key design features: the number of grades or bands they contain, and how wide each of those bands is. These decisions shape everything from how quickly staff can progress to how easy it is to maintain pay equity across similar roles.
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Things to consider when selecting a pay structure: ✓ How many distinct job levels does your organisation have? ✓ Do staff need clear, visible paths for progression? ✓ Is your sector subject to nationally agreed pay frameworks? ✓ How important is flexibility to reward high performance? ✓ What is your exposure to equal pay risk? |
Overview of Common Pay Structure Types
Different organisations—and different sectors—suit different approaches. Below is an overview of the principal pay structure models used by UK employers, along with the contexts in which each tends to work best.
Spot Salaries
A spot salary assigns a single, fixed rate of pay to a specific role or individual—whether expressed as an hourly rate or an annual salary. Unlike a pay band, there is no minimum-to-maximum range: the figure is set by agreement between the employer and the employee.
Spot salaries are frequently used during recruitment to attract individuals into roles where market rates vary considerably. Because each figure is negotiated independently, salaries for the same job title may differ across an organisation, which can create complications as the workforce grows.
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Best suited to: ✓ Start-ups and small businesses with few employees ✓ Highly specialised or hard-to-benchmark roles ✓ Project-based or freelance-adjacent contracts |
It is worth noting that spot salaries do not constitute a formal pay structure in the traditional sense—there are no defined bands or progression pathways—and they carry a higher risk of pay inconsistency across the workforce.
Narrow-Graded Pay Structures
A narrow-graded structure divides roles into a series of defined pay grades—often ten or more—each covering a relatively small salary range. Jobs of comparable value and responsibility sit within the same grade, and progression occurs through incremental steps within a grade or by moving to a higher grade through promotion.
This model is particularly common in the public sector, where clear career pathways and equal pay accountability are priorities. The structure’s transparency helps organisations demonstrate pay equity and maintain compliance with grading frameworks. The trade-off is that employees can reach the top of their grade relatively quickly, which may limit long-term retention if advancement opportunities are limited.
Pay Spines and Spine Points
A pay spine is a structure that sets out a series of fixed salary levels—known as spine points—across an organisation or sector. Each spine point represents a defined pay rate, and employees are assigned to a position on the spine based on their role and experience. Progression through the spine typically follows a set schedule, such as one point per year of service.
Pay spines are closely associated with the public sector, local government, and—most notably—education. Making the pay spine visible to all employees promotes consistency and helps reduce the risk of unexplained pay differences between staff doing comparable work.
From a payroll management perspective, the key annual task is the application of spine point uplifts: when the value assigned to each spine point changes—whether due to cost-of-living adjustments or negotiated increases—every employee whose pay is linked to that point is affected simultaneously. Managing this accurately and efficiently is a central challenge for payroll teams in education and local government.
Broadbanding
Broadbanding consolidates multiple narrow grades into a smaller number of wide pay bands—typically four or five. Within each band, there is significant scope for salary variation based on performance, skills, or market position, without requiring a change in job title or grade.
This approach is common in technology, finance, and professional services, where the emphasis is on rewarding individual contribution rather than tenure. The absence of rigid pay progression rules gives organisations the freedom to respond to competitive salary pressures. Some employers have introduced additional guardrails within each band to manage equal pay considerations more carefully.
Market-Based Pay Structures
A market-based pay structure sets salary ranges using external benchmarking data—industry surveys, regional salary data, and competitor information—rather than internal job evaluation alone. The aim is to keep salaries competitive with what similar roles command in the broader market.
While market-based structures still use defined pay bands, the critical difference is how those ranges are determined. Where a narrow-graded structure ranks roles internally and assigns pay accordingly, a market-based structure asks what the role is worth externally and calibrates accordingly. This approach requires regular review to ensure salary ranges remain current—particularly in sectors or locations where pay is changing rapidly.
Quick comparison: pay structure types
| Structure Type | Typical Sectors | Key Characteristic |
| Spot Salary | Start-ups, niche roles | Individually negotiated; no formal bands |
| Narrow-Graded | Public sector, government | Many grades; incremental progression |
| Pay Spine | Education, local government | Fixed spine points; annual uplift applied across all |
| Broadbanding | Tech, finance, professional services | Few wide bands; performance-led progression |
| Market-Based | Competitive sectors; varied locations | Salary ranges set by external benchmarking |
Pay Structures in Education: A Nationally Regulated Framework
While all the above models are in use across the UK economy, education operates within a distinct environment. Teacher pay is governed by a national framework produced by the Department for Education (DfE), with recommendations made annually by the independent School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB). This means the core pay structure for teachers is set nationally, not by individual schools.
The framework divides teacher pay into three principal ranges:
- Main Pay Range (MPR) — for newly qualified and developing teachers, including Early Career Teachers (ECTs)
- Upper Pay Range (UPR) — for experienced teachers who have applied to progress and met the relevant threshold criteria
- Leadership Pay Range — for headteachers, deputy heads, and assistant headteachers
Schools in England can also make additional payments on top of spine-point-linked salaries. These include Teaching and Learning Responsibility (TLR) payments for broader professional responsibilities, Special Educational Needs (SEN) allowances, and performance-related payments.
Full details of allowances including Teaching and Learning Responsibilities and Leadership ranges are published by the NASUWT.
The 2025/26 Pay Award
The STRB recommended a 4% uplift to teacher pay and allowances in England, effective from 1 September 2025. The government accepted this recommendation and confirmed supplementary funding for schools to help meet the cost of the award.
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Key points from the 2025/26 award: ✓ 4% increase across all pay ranges and allowances ✓ Effective from 1 September 2025 ✓ Applies in England; London weighting zones remain in place ✓ Additional DfE funding allocated to support schools with costs |
For reference, the official government guidance on teacher pay in England is published on GOV.UK.
Advisory Pay Point Structure from September 2025
Main Pay Range — Qualified Teachers
| Spine Point | Rest of England | London Fringe | Outer London | Inner London |
| M1 (Minimum) | £32,916 | £34,398 | £37,870 | £40,317 |
| M2 | £34,823 | £36,373 | £39,851 | £42,234 |
| M3 | £37,101 | £38,627 | £41,935 | £44,238 |
| M4 | £39,556 | £41,075 | £44,128 | £46,238 |
| M5 | £42,057 | £43,545 | £46,800 | £48,952 |
| M6 (Maximum) | £45,352 | £46,839 | £50,474 | £52,300 |
Upper Pay Range — Experienced Qualified Teachers
| Spine Point | Rest of England | London Fringe | Outer London | Inner London |
| U1 (Minimum) | £49,781 | £51,301 | £55,415 | £57,482 |
| U2 | £51,855 | £53,406 | £57,529 | £59,627 |
| U3 (Maximum) | £54,000 | £55,584 | £59,717 | £61,847 |
Unqualified Teacher Pay Range
| Spine Point | Rest of England | London Fringe | Outer London | Inner London |
| U1 (Minimum) | £22,601 | £24,066 | £26,789 | £28,343 |
| U2 | £25,193 | £26,656 | £29,383 | £30,935 |
| U3 | £27,785 | £29,248 | £31,974 | £33,528 |
| U4 | £30,071 | £31,532 | £34,265 | £35,814 |
| U5 | £32,667 | £34,126 | £36,856 | £38,402 |
| U6 (Maximum) | £35,259 | £36,718 | £39,450 | £40,994 |
Note: The figures shown are advisory pay points from September 2025. Schools and academies should verify all current rates against the official DfE pay guidance and their applicable pay policy.
Managing Spine Point Changes: A Practical Overview
For payroll teams in schools, academies, and multi-academy trusts (MATs), the annual spine point cycle involves two distinct activities that must be handled carefully and consistently.
1. Annual Spine Point Increments
Many schools operate a policy of advancing eligible employees by one spine point each year, subject to satisfactory performance. In practice, this requires identifying who is eligible, checking that they have not already reached the top of their pay range, and confirming that no probationary or exclusion conditions apply.
Doing this manually across a large workforce—particularly one with multiple contracts or pay scales—carries a significant risk of error. Employees at the top of their band must not be incremented further, and any exceptions require individual attention. A well-structured payroll process will flag these cases automatically and apply increments only where appropriate.
2. Annual Spine Point Uplifts
Separately, spine point uplifts refer to the change in the monetary value of each spine point—such as when the value of Point M3 rises from one year to the next in line with a pay award. This is distinct from moving an employee to a higher point; it is the underlying value of each point that changes.
When an uplift is applied, it affects every employee whose salary is linked to that spine point simultaneously. Applied correctly, this should be a structured batch process rather than a series of individual manual changes—and it should produce a clear output record for audit and reporting purposes.
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Steps for managing the annual spine point cycle: · Confirm the new spine point values from the pay award · Identify which employees are eligible for an increment and which are static · Apply increments for eligible staff, with exceptions handled individually · Update the monetary value of each spine point across the pay scale · Generate output reports to record all changes for audit purposes · Communicate salary changes to affected staff with updated payslips |
Support Your Organisation with Reliable Education Payroll
The combination of multiple pay ranges, London weighting zones, annual uplifts, and individually tracked employee positions makes education payroll one of the more complex areas of payroll administration. Handled manually, the annual spine point cycle alone can consume many hours of staff time—and the margin for error is significant.
Getting it the details right matters—not only for compliance, but for the trust and confidence of the teachers and support staff who rely on accurate, on-time pay.
Just Payroll Services provides dedicated education payroll services for schools, colleges, academies, and MATs—covering all pay scales, spine points, pensions, and reporting requirements. Our specialists work with organisations of all sizes, applying the same accuracy and care whether you have 50 staff or 5,000.
To find out how we support education organisations with their payroll, explore our payroll services, review our payroll software options, or contact our team to discuss your requirements.