What the job costs #
Salary is the part everyone quotes and the smallest part of the decision. Here is the employment cost at the national median, using the rates in force for the 2026 to 2027 tax year.
£26,463
Median salary
ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 4213
£30,289
Employment cost a year
Salary, employer NI and minimum pension
£17
Per hour worked
37.5 hour week, 46.4 working weeks
| Item | A year | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Median salary | £26,463 | ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 4213 |
| Employer National Insurance | £3,219 | 15 per cent above £5,000 |
| Minimum workplace pension | £607 | 3 per cent of qualifying earnings |
| Employment cost | £30,289 | About £17 an hour on a 37.5 hour week |
Recruitment, equipment, software seats, training and cover for holiday and sickness all sit on top, and they vary too much between businesses to put a number on here.
If you want to run your own figures, the true cost of an employee tool does this with your salary, hours and on costs.
What the week is actually made of #
Here is the job as it usually runs in a business, split by whether the work follows a fixed pattern or needs a person to decide something. This split is our analysis, not a survey, and your version of the role will differ.
Runs to a pattern (7 of 12)
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Take the morning absence calls and record them daily
High volume, fixed fields, fixed window.
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Keep every pupil record in the management information system current daily
Structured data maintenance.
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Run trips paperwork, consents and payments weekly
Forms, deadlines and a payment system.
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Administer free school meals and funding claims weekly
Eligibility rules and a return.
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Process admissions paperwork and waiting lists monthly
Criteria applied in order.
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Order supplies and raise purchase orders weekly
Approved suppliers and budget codes.
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Produce letters, newsletters and the school calendar weekly
Templates and a publishing schedule.
Needs a person (5 of 12)
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Chase unexplained absence to safeguarding standards daily
A child not in school may be a safeguarding matter.
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Handle parent enquiries at the desk, on the phone and by email daily
Parents are anxious and the answers are rarely simple.
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Maintain the single central record for staff vetting monthly
An inspection failure point with real safeguarding weight.
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Book supply staff when someone calls in sick daily
Fast, and the choice matters to a class.
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Administer first aid and pupil medical records daily
Medical information about children, handled in the moment.
What to do before you advertise #
The question is not whether to hire. It is what the person will be doing on a Tuesday afternoon in March. Two things are worth doing first, and both take less effort than writing the advert:
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Count the week you are about to buy
Write down the jobs this role would pick up, how long each takes and how often it happens. The cost of admin time calculator adds it up and puts a cost on it.
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Separate the pattern from the judgement
If most of the hours sit in the first list above, a hire will absorb the pressure rather than remove it, and the same pressure returns when the business grows again.
Plenty of businesses do both: automate the repeated half, then hire someone to do the half that needs a person, often part time or at a level that keeps them interested. That is a better job than the one the advert usually describes.
Where this role usually sits #
This job turns up most often in schools , and the admin around it looks different in each.
A note on the pay figure #
£26,463 is the median for full time employees in SOC 4213, School secretaries, from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 (provisional). ONS publishes a coefficient of variation with every figure, and this one is 4.6 per cent, which ONS treats as reliable.
It is a national figure covering every employer size and region. What a specific business pays depends on where it is, how specialised the job is, and what else is on offer nearby.