Transparency data

Ofsted's gender pay gap report 2019

Published 23 January 2020

Applies to England

Foreword

Ofsted’s aim is to be a force for improvement through intelligent, responsible and focused inspection and regulation. Our work contributes to building a highly educated, productive and safe society in which children and young people can succeed, whatever their background.

As an organisation that holds others to account, we too are accountable, and are open to challenge and scrutiny. Gender pay gap reporting shows how well we achieve equality in our pay structure.

This report provides gender pay gap information for the year to 31 March 2019, with comparable information for the 2 previous years.

I am pleased to report that both our mean and median gender pay gaps, and our median bonus gender pay gap, have significantly reduced this year. Our median pay gap is now at 0%. Our policies and initiatives promote equal opportunities for all our workforce and ensure that women can progress in their careers, and it is really positive to see this reflected in our narrowing pay gaps.

I look forward to reporting again in 12 months’ time.

I confirm that the data reported here is accurate and has been calculated according to the requirements of the Equality Act 2010.

Amanda Spielman
Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector

Introduction

From April 2017, employers with 250 or more employees must publish information on their gender pay gap. The pay gap must be reported on in 6 different ways:

• the mean and median gender pay gaps

• the mean and median gender bonus gaps

• the proportion of men and women who received bonuses

• the proportion of men and women according to quartile pay bands

The gender pay gap is the difference in the average earnings between all men and women in an organisation. It is different to equal pay, which is about the difference in actual earnings of men and women doing equal work (or work of equal value).

The mean gender pay gap is the difference between the mean hourly rate of pay of male full-pay relevant employees and that of female full-pay relevant employees.^{[footnote 1]}

The median gender pay gap is the difference between the median hourly rate of pay of male full-pay relevant employees and that of female full-pay relevant employees.

Ofsted’s gender profile

Our overall percentage of female staff (gender profile), at 66%, has remained stable when compared to previous years. It also continues to be higher than the Civil Service average of 54%, and the UK average of 51%.

We use a spot rate pay model, which means that a single salary is set for each grade. This supports equal pay for equal work. By not having pay ranges, we avoid the pay inequality that can arise from the ability to negotiate salaries or from pay being linked to length of service (see Annex A for our grading structure).

Ofsted’s gender pay gap

Year	2019	2018	2017
Mean gender pay gap	6.6% in favour of men	11.4% in favour of men	8.1% in favour of men
Median gender pay gap	0.0% in favour of men	19.8% in favour of men	2.3% in favour of men
Mean bonus gender pay gap	19.5% in favour of men (an average of £193)	14.6% in favour of men (an average of £64)	20.6% in favour of men (an average of £196)
Median bonus gender pay gap	7.7% in favour of men (an average of £50)	25% in favour of men (an average of £50)	16.7% in favour of men (an average of £100)

Proportion receiving bonus

Men 80% Women 80%

Men 57% Women 57%

Men 71% Women 62%

Proportions of male and female in each pay quartile as at 31 March 2019

Grades	Female %	Male %
Lower	64.4%	35.6%
Lower middle	69.1%	30.9%
Upper middle	77.3%	22.7%
Upper	54.1%	45.9%

Proportions of male and female in each pay quartile as at 31 March 2018

Grades	Female %	Male %
Lower	65.4%	34.6%
Lower middle	71.3%	28.7%
Upper middle	77%	23%
Upper	52.8%	47.2%

Proportions of male and female in each pay quartile as at 31 March 2017

Grades	Female %	Male %
Lower	63.8%	36.2%
Lower middle	65.1%	34.9%
Upper middle	68.1%	31.9%
Upper	54%	46%

Analysis of gender pay gap data

Ofsted’s mean gender pay gap has decreased from 11.4% to 6.6% since last year, and our median pay gap to 0%. The mean gender pay gap across the Civil Service in 2018 was 9.8% and the median was 12.2%. Although our pay gap shows that men continue to be paid more than women, it has substantially narrowed.

Analysis shows that the main reason for the remaining gap continues to be the proportion of male and female employees in different grades.

Proportions of male and female employees in different grades

Although there are more women than men in all but 2 of the grades (SCS pay band 1 and 2), overall there continue to be more women in more junior grades, and more men in the upper pay quartiles.

Our largest employee group, with 332 employees (20% of the Ofsted workforce), is the B1 inspector grade (SEO), 89% of which are female. This reflects the demographic of the social care and early years sectors from which we recruit to posts at this grade.

An improvement in our pay gap was expected this year. As noted in our 2018 report, the insourcing of the early years inspection workforce in April 2017 had had a significant impact on our workforce profile, with 94% of those who transferred in being female, most of whom were in the lower pay quartiles.

In line with Ofsted’s early years inspection strategy, the B2 early years inspector, B1 inspection team manager, B2 quality assurance manager and B1 senior quality assurance manager roles came to an end in early 2019. Most colleagues in these roles have been successful in securing a promotion to the early years regulatory inspector role (at the B1 inspector grade), leading to an overall improvement in our gender pay gap for 2019.

The median bonus gender pay gap has reduced by 17% to 7.7% in favour of men. This represents an average ‘bonus payment’ of £50.

Taking action: 3 years reporting in review

Our previous gender pay gap reports identified some areas of action to improve our gender pay gap.

This section reports on our progress in each area.

Promoting equal opportunities for our entire workforce: our progress

We continue to promote policies and initiatives to support equal opportunities for our entire workforce.

Our four staff networks:

• Ethnic Equalities
• Religion and Faith
• Disability at Work
• Ofsted Rainbow Alliance (ORA)

have played an important role in promoting equality of opportunity and communicating with the business to raise awareness about equality, diversity and inclusion.

In 2019–20, we will launch our new Ofsted Women’s Network.

Encouraging flexible working: our progress

We continue to support staff who have caring responsibilities through flexible working practices and procedures.

Creating a more agile and collaborative work environment is part of our people strategy and we continue to promote flexible working across the organisation.

Many of our learning and development activities on offer can be accessed via our online learning platform, LearnSpace. This means that, whatever their working hours, pattern or location, our workforce can easily access the right learning, tools and guidance, all of which contribute to their progression at work.

An activity for 2020 will be to review and promote our flexible working policy and procedure.

Creating an environment that supports smarter working: our progress

We continue to ensure that Ofsted has the right culture, tools, systems and processes in place to support colleagues with modern, evidence-based flexible working.

We have introduced Smarter Working principles to ensure that locations, space and time are used effectively.

In 2017, our Smarter Working Board was formed to support colleagues to work flexibly and make the best use of technology, while maintaining quality outputs.

We have created a dedicated intranet site to provide guidance and support to colleagues in embracing and implementing Smarter Working principles.

We have launched an internal social network to ensure that colleagues can:

• share good practice
• maintain contact with other colleagues to reduce feelings of isolation
• provide top tips on achieving a positive work-life balance

We have also created a bespoke line manager and employee training pack, focusing on remote working and managing remote working.

We launched a Smarter Working Survey for colleagues to share their experiences, the results of which inform our future action planning.

Career development: our progress

We aim to ensure that all staff have access to development opportunities and career conversations to support them in progressing their careers.

We provide a suite of resources via our online learning portal to help individuals and their managers have effective career conversations.

We provide face-to-face training on areas, such as interview skills, which aims to equip participants with the skills and techniques to build confidence, knowledge and understanding based on the new Success Profiles.

Improved transparency of performance-related pay: our progress

We have increased the transparency of how our performance-related pay schemes are used.

We now share quarterly infographics with the whole workforce, setting out how awards across our in-year reward schemes have been distributed by directorate, grade and gender.

Creating better gender balance: our progress

We explored how we could attract more men into our workforce to create a more even gender balance, given that we have more women at most levels of our organisation.

In addition to our existing recruitment and selection policy, procedure and guidance, in July 2018, we launched ‘Unconscious bias in recruitment’ guidance.

In November 2018, we launched our internal unconscious bias and equalities training, which is mandatory for all staff.

We now use blind sifting for all our applications.

Annex A: Ofsted’s grading structures

APT grading structure

Senior Civil Service (SCS) grade equivalent	Grade
SCS	SCS

Civil Service (CS) grade equivalent	Grade
Grade 6	Principal Officer
Grade 7	Band A APT
SEO	B1 APT
HEO	B2 APT
EO	B3 APT
AO	C1 APT

Inspector grading structure

CS grade equivalent	Grade
Grade 6	Senior HMI
Grade 7	HMI
Grade 7	RIM
SEO	B1 Inspector
HEO	B2 Inspector

Apprentice grading structure

CS grade equivalent	Grade
AO	C1 Apprentice

1. ‘Full-pay relevant employee’ means a relevant employee who is not, during the relevant pay period, being paid at a reduced rate or nil as a result of the employee being on leave, The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017. Throughout this report, references to employees or gender profile includes full-pay relevant employees only.
   The ‘relevant pay period’, in relation to the relevant employee, means (a) the period in respect of which the relevant employer pays the employee basic pay, whether weekly, fortnightly, or monthly or any other period, or (b) if the relevant employer does not pay the employee basic pay, the period in respect of which the employer most frequently pays the employee one of the elements of ordinary pay mentioned in regulation 3(1) (b) to (e), The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017. ↩