Take-home pay for a teaching assistant

Most teaching assistants are paid on the NJC pay spine, and the salary that lands in your account is well below the advertised grade, because hours and term-time working both cut it. Take a hypothetical TA on spine point 5 (£26,427 full time) working 32.5 hours a week for 39 weeks a year. That comes to about £20,144 a year, and about £1,424 a month after the Local Government Pension Scheme, Income Tax and National Insurance in 2026/27. Grades, hours and term-time formulas vary by employer, so your own payslip is the final word.

From advertised salary to actual salary

Pay for school support staff is built in three steps.

1. Full-time equivalent salary. This is the spine point for your grade. The 2026/27 NJC award added 3.3 per cent from 1 April 2026, and the lowest point is now SCP 3 at £25,614. Each council or academy trust decides which points a TA grade covers.
2. Hours. A full-time week on NJC terms is 37 hours, so a 32.5-hour post is paid 32.5/37 of the full-time salary.
3. Term-time. You are paid for the weeks you work plus a pro-rata share of holiday and bank holidays, and the result is paid in twelve equal monthly instalments.

The NJC’s advisory model for term-time pay gives a worked example: 39 weeks with a 36-day leave comparator works out at 86.778 per cent of the full-time salary. Many employers use this or something close. A different number of working weeks or a different leave allowance changes the percentage. How term-time-only pay is calculated goes through the formula.

Two worked examples

These figures use England rates, a 1257L tax code, the 86.778 per cent term-time factor and LGPS membership in the main section. They are examples, not quotes for any particular school.

	TA on SCP 5, 32.5 hours	TA on SCP 3, 27.5 hours
Full-time salary	£26,427	£25,614
Actual annual salary	£20,143.70	£16,520.30
LGPS rate	5.8%	5.5%
LGPS contribution (monthly)	£97.36	£75.72
Income Tax (monthly)	£106.76	£50.70
National Insurance (monthly)	£50.49	£26.34
Take-home pay (monthly)	£1,424.03	£1,223.94

The first TA keeps about 85 per cent of gross pay, the second about 89 per cent. Neither repays a student loan, since £20,143.70 is below even the lowest undergraduate threshold, the £25,000 for Plan 5.

The LGPS rate for part-time staff

The LGPS sets your contribution band from the pay you actually receive, so part-time, term-time staff usually fall in the lowest bands: 5.5 per cent up to £18,400 and 5.8 per cent from £18,401 to £29,000. Your employer sets your band each April.

The LGPS also has a 50/50 section for tight months: you pay half the normal rate and build up half the pension, while life and ill-health cover stays at the full level. The choice has long-term effects. Local Government Pension Scheme explains the trade-off, and your pension fund can tell you what it would mean for you.

Why your pay is the same every month

Term-time pay is annualised, so a TA gets the same amount in August as in October. That gives a steady income through the summer. The hourly rate on your payslip can look lower than the advertised one, because the money is spread across the whole year.

Tax and National Insurance fit this pattern easily. Income Tax through PAYE is worked out across the tax year and National Insurance month by month, so equal payments mean equal deductions.

Extra hours, such as after-school clubs, exam invigilation or a training day outside your contract, are usually added to a later month’s pay and taxed in that month.

A second job at the same school

Many TAs also work as midday supervisors or in breakfast clubs. With the same employer, the pay is usually combined on one payslip under one tax code, and National Insurance is worked out on the total. With a different employer, such as an academy trust and a council, HMRC normally puts the second job on a BR code, taxing it all at 20 per cent, and each job gets its own National Insurance threshold. Tax when you have two jobs covers when to ask HMRC to split your allowance.

Benefits that can top up a TA salary

On salaries in this range, some TAs with children or high housing costs qualify for Universal Credit, which uses your monthly pay after tax, National Insurance and pension. Parents may be able to use Tax-Free Childcare or the funded childcare hours in England instead. Universal Credit while working explains how earnings are counted. Your own hours and grade go into the take-home pay calculator.