Transparency data

Ofsted: gender pay gap report and data 2020

Published 15 December 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, it is important that we too are accountable, and are open to challenge and scrutiny. Reporting on the gender pay gap shows how well we achieve equality in our pay structure.

This report provides information on the gender pay gap for the year 2019–20, with data to 31 March 2020 and comparable information for the previous 3 years.

We are confident that our policies and initiatives promote equal opportunities for all our workforce and ensure that women can progress in their careers.

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

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).

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 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 67%, has remained stable when compared to previous years and continues to be higher than the Civil Service average of 54%, and the UK average of 51%.

Our spot rate pay model, where a single salary is set for each grade, 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	2020	2019	2018	2017
Mean gender pay gap	4.8% in favour of men	6.6% in favour of men	11.4% in favour of men	8.1% in favour of men
Median gender pay gap	6.2% in favour of women	0.0% in favour of men	19.8% in favour of men	2.3% in favour of men
Mean bonus gender pay gap	14.2% in favour of men (an average of £128)	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	14.3% in favour of men (an average of £100)	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 78% Women 80%	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 2017–2020

Download a csv file with the underlying data.

Analysis of gender pay gap data

Ofsted’s mean gender pay gap has decreased from 6.6% to 4.8% since last year and our median pay gap is now -6.2%. The mean gender pay gap across the Civil Service in 2020 was 9.2% and the median was 10.3%. Although our data shows that men continue to be paid more than women, the gap continues to narrow.

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

Although there are more women than men in the majority of grades, overall there continue to be more women in junior grades, with a more even gender balance in the upper pay quartiles. SCS 2 is the only pay band where there are more men than women. SCS 1 and Principal Officer have achieved a 50:50 split.

Our largest employee group, with 342 employees (19% 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.

For the first time, we have reported a median gender pay gap in favour of women. We attribute this to restructuring our early years workforce. This led to an increase in the female population in the upper-middle quartile.

While more women than men received bonuses in 2019–20, men tended to receive a higher value bonus. This has impacted the mean and median bonus gender pay gap differently. As women were more likely to receive a bonus, the mean bonus gender pay gap has decreased by 5.3 percentage points to 14.2%. However, as men’s bonuses were often of a higher value (an average ‘bonus payment’ of £100) this has caused the median bonus gender pay gap to increase to 14.3% from 7.7%.

Taking action: 4 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 5 staff networks have played an important role in promoting equality of opportunity and communicating with the business to raise awareness about equality, diversity and inclusion:

• Disability at Work
• Ethnic Equalities
• Ofsted Rainbow Alliance (ORA)
• Ofsted Women’s Network
• Religion and Faith

We launched the newest of our networks, the Ofsted Women’s network, during 2019–20. Its members plan to focus on supporting and developing women in Ofsted and will take the opportunity to learn from each other. The network ran its first event in support of International Women’s Day, at which Amanda Spielman shared her career experiences and challenges.

Supporting flexible working

We continue to support staff who have caring responsibilities through flexible working practices and procedures. We continue to support flexible working across the organisation. As part of our people strategy, we aim to create a more agile and collaborative work environment.

Staff can access most of our learning and development offering through 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.

We plan to resume reviewing our flexible working policy and procedure, which we have paused due to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, because it is still an area of focus for when our staff return to more usual work. We have adapted well to a more flexible working approach and will use the learning from this to inform our work on the flexible working policy.

Creating an environment that supports smarter working: our progress during COVID-19

In March 2020, all staff were required to work from home if they could. Our existing Smarter Working processes and proven digital capabilities meant that this was a relatively seamless transition for our organisation.

Career development

We 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 through LearnSpace to help individuals and their managers have effective career conversations.

We provide training on areas such as interview skills that aim to equip participants with the skills and techniques to build confidence, knowledge and understanding based on the Success Profiles Framework. This is a Civil Service-wide framework designed to attract and retain people of talent and experience from a range of sectors and all walks of life. We also provide training to interview panels to ensure that our interview practice is unbiased.

Improved transparency of performance-related pay

We have been reporting on the distribution of our Instant Recognition and In-Year Performance Award schemes since 2018–19. While there are differences between the value of awards paid to men and women, we are pleased to see that on a day-to-day basis there is not a significant disparity, as seen through our bonus pay gap reporting. We will continue to report on this so we can act quickly if anything changes.

Creating better gender balance

The demographics of the sectors we recruit from, which remain predominately female, will likely continue to have an impact on the gender balance of our inspection and regulatory workforce.

We have embedded success profiles across recruitment and performance management, and we continue to implement blind sifting, including for gender. While we cannot conclude that there is a causal link, we have seen a small increase in the proportion of men being appointed to inspection roles across the year.

We continue to maximise flexibility in both location and patterns of our roles, including senior positions whenever possible.

Annex A: Ofsted’s grading structures

APT grading structure

Senior Civil Service (SCS) grade equivalent	Grade
SCS	SCS

Civil Service 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

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

Apprentice grading structure

Civil Service 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, according to 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) in The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017. ↩