I whooped when reading about the increase in maternity pay included in the government’s schools White Paper.

For those of us who have been raising awareness about the issue of inadequate maternity pay for teachers, the news that full pay will be doubled from four to eight weeks is a significant and important milestone.

It signals a commitment to tackling the ”motherhood penalty” and taking steps to ensure that teaching is a life- and family-friendly profession.

Teachers’ low maternity pay

As a co-founder of WomenEd and supporter of the Maternity Teacher Paternity Teacher (MTPT) Project, I have championed this cause for the past decade.

I have also raised the issue of attrition rates for women in their thirties, the largest demographic to leave the teaching profession annually, directly with the secretary of state for education through my membership of the Headteachers’ Roundtable.

I am proud that research and campaigns, most notably the Missing Mothers report, a study led by the New Britain Project in collaboration with the MTPT Project, have successfully highlighted the great disparities in maternity pay and the woeful pay and conditions faced by mother-teachers in the UK.

Government funding to support this change to maternity pay for teachers and the promise of commensurate improvements to support staff maternity terms are significant.

This will enable women working in education to have more genuine personal, parenting choices.

Motherhood dilemmas

The current maternity entitlements for educators fail to recognise the immense life transition involved when becoming a parent.

The School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document currently awards teachers four weeks at full pay, two weeks at 90 per cent and 12 weeks at half pay prior to statutory maternity pay kicking in.

By comparison, those working for the NHS receive eight weeks’ full pay and 18 weeks’ half pay. Meanwhile, even more galling, those working within the Department for Education enjoy preferential terms akin to the private sector: 28 weeks at full pay.

Most teachers remain unaware of this meagre entitlement until they start planning a family. These terms are outlined after they submit their MAT B1 form following their 20-week scan.

For many, the excitement of baby names, nursery decoration and nesting is marred by the sobering calculations of how much time they can afford to take on maternity leave.

Like for most mother-teachers, my maternity leave decisions were contingent on finances. When my first child was born, I took a six-month break from my role as assistant principal and, like many teachers, I returned to work just before the summer holiday to avoid being penalised by a summer of statutory maternity pay.

For my second and third pregnancies, with my last happening during my current headship, I returned to work after four months, given the financial implications of relying on statutory maternity pay as the primary earner in our household.

Losing valuable staff

Most teachers start their maternity leave after around 37 of 38 weeks of their pregnancy, and some almost go into labour at school because they work up to their due date, keen to waste as little of their maternity leave as possible without a baby.

And after six weeks of maternity leave, when the period of full - or near to full - pay ends and they move on to half of their regular salary, their bodies are still healing from childbirth and they are still acclimatising to a world with an additional tiny extra life in it.

We know that the two years following maternity leave represent a significant risk to losing talent from our workforce (18 per cent leave after year one and 27 per cent after year two of their return). And although maternity pay isn’t the sole reason for this exodus, it no doubt contributes to decision-making at this time.

Support, workload expectations, school culture and the flexibility offered are key to making this substantial life change and multi-tasking feat a success, professionally, logistically and emotionally.

There is much more yet to do to make employment conditions better, not least addressing poor paternity leave terms; enhancing shared parental leave; tackling the costs of childcare, access to it, and its flexibility; and funding coaching and mentoring support for teaching parents.

However, the announcement this week is a step in the right direction and one that shows an investment in our profession.

While academies and multi-academy trusts already have the powers and freedoms to give preferential terms such as improved maternity pay, boosting school funding to cover these costs will enable this to happen wholesale.

For a profession of which 70 per cent are female and around 4 per cent are on maternity leave at any given time (perhaps more by 2027-2028), this is all long overdue - but it’s still worth celebrating.

Helena Marsh, principal of Linton Village College in Cambridgeshire, is co-founder of WomenEd and a member of the Headteachers’ Roundtable

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