What is the Early Career Teacher (ECT) Salary for 2022?

If you’re looking to start a career in education, you’ll be pleased to hear that starting salary for early career teachers (formerly known as newly qualified teachers, or NQTs) is relatively generous. Teachers’ salaries work on pay scales, starting with the ECT salary and moving up to the management and head teacher positions. 

In July 2020, the government confirmed a starting salary pay rise of 5.5% for the 2020/21 academic year. That means that the Early Career Teacher salary would be £25,714 in England (excluding inner London) and £32,157 in inner London. The ECT salary saw the biggest hike in the changes; more experienced teachers received a 2.75% increase. 

The government has pledged to increase the NQT salary across the country to £30,000 by September 2022 as part of the early career framework, yet the timescale has not yet been confirmed.  

The teaching and NQT pay scales run on the ‘main range’ pay scale, from M1 – M6 with the NQT at M1. Following this is the U1-3 pay scale, which is the ‘upper range’ pay scale, and finally there is the ‘leadership range’ pay scale.  

As a rule of thumb, classroom teachers are normally awarded a pay rise when the pay ranges and allowances are updated, as long as they have met the performance levels for their role. Every September, teachers on the main pay scale tend to move up to the next point.

Schools have however gained a little more freedom recently to apply their own pay policies to enable them to attract and retain teaching staff.   

Working as a teacher comes with a range of different benefits and ways to top up your salary.   

These are the schemes available:  

As a teacher, you are automatically a member of the teachers’ pension scheme. It is one of eight pensions guaranteed by the government, and typically offers teachers around £7,000 in employer contributions each year, linked to salary.   

The government are keen to encourage increased numbers of science, computer science and languages teachers in certain kinds of schools in specific geographical areas, so if this is your subject area, it is worth finding out if you are eligible to claim back payments towards your student loan, further details can be found here.

If you are working as a qualified teacher with Special Education Needs students, then you could be eligible for a SEN allowance. This ranges from £2,270 to £4,479 annually. 

TLRs are top up payments and uplifts that are given to teachers who take on extra areas of responsibility. This doesn’t mean covering for a sick colleague or filling in on a field trip. But Early Career Teachers who take on a long term extra duty can potentially claim a TLR payment for the extra work performed.