Pay portability for teachers moving schools in Wales

When a teacher on the core pay scale moves between teaching posts within Wales, the new employer must offer at least the salary point they had already reached. That is the principle of pay portability, written into the Welsh teachers’ pay document as a mandatory requirement. It protects scale position, so a teacher on C4 does not drop back to C1 by changing school.

What the document requires

The employer making the appointment, which the document calls the relevant body, must follow five principles for moves between teaching posts in Wales on the core scale.

1. Portability relates to the point you reached on the core scale, including before you moved into a leadership role. It does not cover allowances or your position on a leadership scale, though experience from leadership roles may influence the employer’s decision on salary.
2. The salary offered must at least match the point you reached in your current post. It should also include any increment you would have expected to receive had you stayed at that time.
3. For a move into or out of a part-time post it is applied pro rata.
4. It spans a break in teaching service caused by redundancy or by health or social reasons such as maternity or paternity leave, medical reasons or family care. An employer that wants to take a different view must have grounds that are non-discriminatory.
5. The equivalent scale point is worked out as the point you would have reached under the Welsh scales in force at the time of the new appointment, treating your years of past service as if they had been paid on those scales.

The fifth principle matters when scales change, as they did when one core scale replaced the main and upper scales from September 2026. The new points are shown in teacher pay in Wales.

An illustration

Say a teacher on the old M5 point in 2025 moves to another Welsh school in autumn 2026. M5 became C4 on the new scale, which is £43,821 from 1 September 2026. The offer must be at least that, and if a year’s progression would have taken them to C5 on the next 1 September, the offer should include it. The numbers are hypothetical. The part-time pay guide explains what a part-time move does to the figure.

What portability does not cover

Allowances are outside it. A TLR or ALN allowance at your old school is tied to the duties and does not travel, so a new school makes its own decision. Leadership scale position is also excluded.

The mandatory principles apply to moves within Wales. The document separately allows a relevant body, at its own discretion, to take experience into account when a qualified teacher moves to a Welsh maintained school from a teaching role in another sector or another jurisdiction, or returns to teaching after working in a relevant sector outside teaching. Nothing makes the school do that.

Breaks, redundancy and part-time moves

Two of the principles protect people with interrupted careers. A gap caused by redundancy, maternity or paternity leave, medical reasons or family care does not wipe out the point you reached, and a new employer that wants to treat the gap differently has to have grounds that are non-discriminatory. If you are changing between full-time and part-time posts, the matched point stays the same and the pay is calculated pro rata, so a move from a 60% post to a full-time one is paid at the full salary for the same point.

Check before you accept

Ask the school to state in writing which point on the core scale it is offering, how it worked that out and whether any increment is included. Compare the figure with your last payslip. For the English position see upper pay range status when moving school in England, and the moving schools guide covers notice dates. If you think portability has been applied wrongly, your union or the local authority’s HR team can help.