Salary Story: Why Taking A £18k Pay Cut Was Worth It

In our series Salary Stories, women with long-term career experience open up about the most intimate details of their jobs: compensation. It’s an honest look at how real people navigate the complicated world of negotiating, raises, promotions and job loss, with the hope it will give young women more insight into how to advocate for themselves — and maybe take a few risks along the way.

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Age: 26
Location: Cheltenham
Current industry and job title: EHC plan coordinator for a local authority special needs team in education
Current salary: £37,500
Number of years employed since school or university: Six

Starting salary: £22,917 in 2017
Biggest salary jump: From £17,500 to £37,500 in 2022
Biggest salary drop: From £30,599 in 2020 to £12,000 in 2021

Biggest negotiation regret: I worked in a primary school and in my second year I became head of English. This involved lots of extra work as we were entirely redesigning the way the school taught English. At the time, I had no idea how teaching pay worked so when the headteacher offered to move me two points up the pay scale (which at the time, meant I would be going up from £28,413 to only £30,599). I said YES!

What I didn’t know was that there are extra payments called TLRs for people taking on the amount of extra work and responsibility that I was. I was so thrilled to be getting a little extra money that I didn’t investigate further, or question why the senior leadership team was so keen to agree to me moving up the pay scale... It was to save them money!

Looking back, I wish I had more information about how pay scales worked — but these things aren’t taught to you; you kind of muddle along in the dark until someone else explains it. Those above should be more transparent, but I also wish I had been less naive and more proactive.

Best salary advice: At some point, the “good” salary you are on becomes a “bad” salary if you are working 60+ hours to make it and none of that extra work is recognised or rewarded.