Most school support staff are paid on a term-time-only basis: you work during school terms and are paid an annual salary, usually in 12 equal monthly instalments. Here’s how that salary is worked out.
The short version
Actual annual pay = FTE salary × hours fraction × paid-weeks factor
- FTE salary: the full-time, all-year salary for your grade (your spine point).
- Hours fraction: your weekly hours ÷ full-time hours (37 under the NJC Green Book).
- Paid-weeks factor: (weeks worked + holiday weeks) ÷ 52.143.
This is the method in the NJC Green Book’s term-time-only guidance (Part 4.12), agreed by employers and unions. It was updated in March 2024 to reflect the new holiday rules for part-year workers.
Step by step, with an example
Take a teaching assistant on SCP 5 (£26,427 FTE in 2026/27), working 30 hours a week for 39 weeks, with Green Book leave and under 5 years’ service.
1. Hours fraction
30 ÷ 37 = 0.8108. On its own, that gives a pro-rata all-year salary of £26,427 × 0.8108 = £21,427.30.
2. Full-time leave
A full-time, all-year employee on the Green Book with under 5 years’ service gets 23 days’ annual leave + 8 bank holidays + 2 extra days = 33 days. At 5 days a week that’s 6.6 weeks.
3. Pro-rate the holiday to the weeks you work
An all-year employee works 52.143 − 6.6 = 45.543 weeks to earn 6.6 weeks’ leave. You work 39 weeks, so:
39 × 6.6 ÷ 45.543 = 5.652 holiday weeks
4. Paid weeks
39 + 5.652 = 44.652 paid weeks
5. Paid-weeks factor
44.652 ÷ 52.143 = 0.8563
6. Annual and monthly pay
£26,427 × 0.8108 × 0.8563 = £18,348.91 a year, or £1,529.08 a month.
The term-time pay calculator shows these same steps for your own figures.
Why 52.143 weeks?
A year has 365 days, and 365 ÷ 7 = 52.143 weeks. The NJC guidance uses 52.143, and so do NJC hourly rates (FTE ÷ 52.143 ÷ 37). Some councils round to 52.14. That changes monthly pay by a fraction of a penny.
The days-based version
Some payroll teams work in days rather than weeks: 195 working days (39 weeks), and 260.71 days in a full year (52.143 × 5). It’s the same calculation in different units, so the result is the same apart from rounding.
What this doesn’t include
- Tax, National Insurance and pension contributions (all our figures are gross).
- Overtime, extra hours and allowances.
- Pay rises during the year: the April pay award is often agreed late and backdated.
Sources
- NJC Green Book Part 4.12, Term-Time Only Employees (LGA circular, updated 13 March 2024): local.gov.uk
- Working Time Regulations 1998, regulations 13, 13A and 15B: legislation.gov.uk
- GOV.UK, Holiday entitlement: gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights
- NJC pay scales 2026/27 (via NALC): nalc.gov.uk
- National Minimum Wage rates: gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates
Every constant the calculators use is listed, with its source, in the site’s rules file. The “Rules last checked” date on each calculator shows when those figures were last checked against these sources.