This week, we offer head teachers and school leaders the opportunity and resources to achieve equal pay at your school, providing access to a toolkit to help you achieve this.
Equal Pay has been around for a long time. Introduced by Harold Wilson’s labour government, the Equal Pay Act 1970 was an Act of Parliament that prohibited any less favourable treatment between men and women in terms of pay and conditions of employment.
In the UK, the gender pay gap stubbornly remains at 15.5% and almost 30,000 equal pay claims are brought before the courts each year. Needless to say that schools are not immune from this legislation – now known as the Equality Act 2010.
NAHT has been very much at the forefront of the overall pay debate in schools. Most recently, the Equality Trust, with support from an expert steering group (of which the NAHT was a member), has launched a toolkit to support equal pay in the workplace
The toolkit was created to help employees, workers and union representatives to explore (and where required) address unequal pay in their workplaces through examining the policies and practices in a workplace that can lead to this inequality.
In particular, the toolkit includes:
- talking about pay with your colleagues
- talking about pay to your employer
- the difference you can make through policy changes
- conducting an equal pay audit
- building a workplace culture that supports pay equality.
The toolkit focuses on pay equality between men and women because there is currently a legal framework that employers are compelled to abide by and through which they can be challenged if they fail to pay equally.
That said, and equally importantly, the toolkit can also be applied more broadly where inequality concerns relate to race, disability and/or sexuality, all of which fall under the Equality Act 2010.
We hope you find the toolkit useful.
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About NAHT
NAHT is the leading union for school leaders’ and as a member you get access to legal support and advice, discounts and deals on your daily purchases, access to a mentoring scheme and savings on our highly-rated CPD courses and conferences. To join us, visit out membership page.