A thousand school workers in Sheffield receive repayment offers in compensation milestone

Beginning on 23 April, around 1,000 school workers across Sheffield began to receive equal pay settlements from the city council.

The payouts follow a sustained campaign from unions GMB, Unite and Unison. They recognise years of systematically underpaid work in roles which have historically been dominated by women.

The unions first highlighted the injustice to the council back in September 2023. The council then announced that it had reached a landmark agreement on pay redress in September 2025. At the time, it stated that:

The agreement will see more than 3,600 employees in the Council in around 260 roles receive a redress payment to address the historical equal pay issues. The total offers to these employees are estimated to cost around £36m. The payments to eligible employees will be funded by reserves.

The Sheffield Role Review Programme

However, on 28 April 2026, Sheffield Council told local news outlet The Star that it’s carrying out the repayment work in stages. As such, it’s currently contacting only the staff in community-maintained schools.

As such, around 1,000 workers across 38 schools recieved their repayment offers on 23 and 24 April. The council stated that the number of recipients is lower than last year’s estimate because:

Schools that have not yet completed the data assurance process or have recently converted to an academy will be included later this year, once that work is finalised.

Community-maintained schools are being treated separately from other council services, because the process needed to be tailored to work for schools.

All of the institutions fell under the remit of the Sheffield Role Review Programme, which examined payment levels in jobs with a historic majority of women staff members.

The affected jobs include teaching assistants and office workers, but not teachers themselves. Likewise, the programme reviewed all roles in the schools, regardless of whether the unions submitted a claim relating to them.

George Ayre, Unison’s organiser for the region, said:

This will affect a significant number of low-paid support staff at community schools.

It’s the result of a lengthy negotiation process to help workers who’ve experienced pay inequality.

The union will continue to deal with pay injustice wherever it occurs.

‘A real and tangible difference’

The payments will be backdated to 2018, and are set to include pension top-ups. As such, some employees could be looking at five-figure offers, in redress for 8 years of underpayment.

All being well, the money should be with the workers — 90% of whom are women — by the summer. However, the money will still be subject to national insurance and tax contributions.

GMB characterised the milestone as a “significant moment in the ongoing process” of righting historic inequalities under the council. Peter Davies, head of the union’s Regional Equal Pay Unit, said:

This week marks a powerful moment for working people in Sheffield.

For many of these workers, this money will make a real and tangible difference to their lives.

This progress reflects the collective work between GMB and Sheffield City Council to address historic inequalities.

We need to ensure that pay injustice is never again something council employees in Sheffield are forced to experience.

The process of redressing the sexist pay imbalance will be a long one, and the unions will need to be vigilant that all of the workers receive their payments in full.

However, and for now, the first wave of offers marks the culmination of years of negotiation, and a significant victory for the workers and their hard-working representatives.

Featured image via the Canary