Teachers' Pay and Pensions Team

Address:

General payroll queries email address:
teachers.pay@deni.gov.uk

Teachers' Pay and Pensions Team is responsible for paying salaries to approximately 21,000 teachers each month who are employed either on a permanent or temporary basis in over 1,300 grant-aided schools in the Controlled, Maintained and Voluntary sectors throughout Northern Ireland.

About 19,400 salaries are paid at the end of the month to teachers employed on a permanent basis and about 3,900 are paid in the middle of the month to those teachers who, in the previous month, were employed on a temporary basis. In the 2004/05 financial year, the branch paid in the region of £729m in salaries.

Teachers who are appointed to permanent posts in grant-aided schools must be able to satisfy the requirements of the Teachers (Eligibility) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1997. Basically, these require that teachers -

1. Have the necessary teaching qualifications (including the General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland membership requirement)
2. Are able to satisfy their employers that they have the health or physical capacity for employment as a teacher
3. Must not have had their eligibility to teach restricted or removed on health or misconduct grounds.

Teachers' Pay and Pensions Team is responsible for checking that their eligibility has not been restricted or prohibited on misconduct grounds and their employers are responsible for ensuring they have the necessary health or physical capacity.

Appointment of teachers to teaching posts in schools

In Northern Ireland, teachers are appointed to posts by the body responsible for the management of the school in which the vacancy has arisen. The Department of Education does not appoint teachers.

Vacancies are usually advertised in local papers and in the main daily papers, which, in Northern Ireland are the Belfast Telegraph, the Irish News and the News Letter. Often vacancies are advertised in educational journals as well.

Management bodies

The education system in Northern Ireland consists of different types of grant-aided schools under the control of various management bodies, which are also the employers of teachers. The Department of Education does not employ teachers.

Altogether, there are about 1,340 grant-aided schools for which the management bodies are as follows:-

Controlled Schools. These consist of nursery, primary, secondary, grammar and special schools, which are under the management of the five Education and Library Boards whose names, addresses and telephone numbers may be obtained from the types of school page.

Maintained Schools. These consist of nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, which are under the management of the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools whose address and telephone number can also be found on the types of school page.

Voluntary Schools. In Northern Ireland, the main types of voluntary school are as follows -

• Voluntary Grammar schools. These consist of secondary grammar schools, which, individually, are under the management of a Board of Governors.
• Integrated Education schools. These consist of primary and secondary schools, which, individually, are under the management of a Board of Governors.
• Irish Medium Education schools. These consist of primary and secondary schools, which, individually, are under the management of a Board of Governors.

Their names, addresses and telephone numbers of all the voluntary schools in Northern Ireland may be obtained from Schools in Northern Ireland

Salary and conditions of service of teachers

Northern Ireland Substitute Teacher Register (NISTR)

The Department of Education, in partnership with employing authorities, support associations and the teacher unions, has established an online regional database of qualified teachers who provide substitute (supply) cover for schools throughout Northern Ireland.

You can register on the NISTR, or find more information about registering by visiting the Northern Ireland Substitute Teacher Register website.

You can view our most common questions with regards to teachers salaries, on the Popular questions page.