Transparency data

Ofsted: gender pay gap report and data 2021

Published 27 January 2022

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 2020–21, with data to 31 March 2021 and comparable information for the previous 3 years. The overall picture is of a fair balance of reward between men and women.

We are confident that our policies and initiatives promote equal opportunities for all our workforce and ensure that both sexes 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 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).

Since April 2017, employers with 250 or more employees must publish information on their gender pay gap annually. 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

The percentage of female staff (gender profile) has remained at 67% with little fluctuation since 2018. This 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

	2021	2020	2019	2018
Mean gender pay gap	3.6% in favour of men	4.8% in favour of men	6.6% in favour of men	11.4% in favour of men
Median gender pay gap	8.0% in favour of women	6.2% in favour of women	0.0% in favour of men	19.8% in favour of men
Proportion receiving bonus	Men 93%, Women 91%	Men 78%, Women 80%	Men 80%, Women 80%	Men 57%, Women 57%
Mean bonus gender pay gap	2.1% in favour of men (an average of £13.50)	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)
Median bonus gender pay gap	0% favouring neither men nor women.	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)

Chart of the proportions of male and female in each pay quartile as at 31 March 2018–2021

^{View data in an accessible table format.}

Analysis of gender pay gap data

Ofsted’s mean gender pay gap has decreased from 4.8% to 3.6% since last year and our median pay gap has continued to decrease below zero to -8.0%. The mean gender pay gap across the Civil Service in 2021 was 7.8% and the median was 8.1%.

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

Although there are more women than men in many grades, there continue to be more women in junior grades overall. There is a more even gender balance in the upper pay quartiles, with a 50:50 gender split for both Senior Civil Service (SCS) 1 and 2 pay bands.

Our largest employee group, with 336 employees (19% of our workforce), is the B1 inspector grade (SEO), 88% of whom are female. This reflects the demographic of the social care and early years sectors from which we recruit to posts at this grade.

We attribute the median gender pay gap in favour of women to the large number of female employees in the middle quartiles.

There is a 1.5 percentage point difference in the proportion of men and women receiving a bonus. The mean bonus gender pay gap has decreased by 12.1 percentage points, and the median bonus gender pay gap decreased by 14.3 percentage points to 0%. We attribute this to the temporary COVID-19 guidance for our 2020–21 in-year reward scheme. We encouraged teams to make awards more often, for a smaller value, and to recognise behaviours and outputs equally. This has led to a significant increase in the proportion of both men and women receiving bonuses and a reduction in both the mean and median bonus gender pay gaps.

Taking action: 5 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

We continue to promote policies and initiatives to support equal opportunities for our entire workforce. We regularly consult our staff networks when developing and reviewing policy.

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. These networks are:

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

Supporting flexible working

We have continued to support staff who have caring responsibilities through flexible working practices and procedures. This has been particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many employees have had to manage their caring responsibilities during the working day. To support staff in this position, we have relaxed and flexed our usual policies. As restrictions have eased, we have returned to business-as-usual policy. We continue to monitor the wider COVID-19 situation so that we are prepared should the need arise to review our policies again.

We will be considering which HR policies we will need to amend to reflect our approach to the government’s estate strategy and the changes to our ways of working. We will continue to consider whether we need to develop any new policies. The outcome of these HR policy reviews will inform our policy plan for the remainder of 2021–22.

Staff can access many of our learning and development offers through our learning platform, LearnSpace. This means that, whatever their working hours, working pattern or location, our workforce can easily access the right learning, tools and guidance, all of which contribute to their progression at work. Our suite of learning and development has various delivery options for most courses so that our staff can access development in the best way for them.

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

During the pandemic, our existing ‘smarter working’ practices and proven digital capabilities meant that we were able to set up a whole-organisation response extremely quickly. We deployed many experienced Ofsted staff into high-impact roles, contributing directly to the national response.

We have considered our preferred future way of working as we come out of the pandemic. We implemented a hybrid-working model from September 2021. This is available to all administrative, professional, and technical (APT) staff. This model will provide flexibility to both the organisation and the workforce in how and where much of our work is done. This model will be regularly reviewed and adjusted as necessary.

Career development

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

We provide resources through LearnSpace to help individuals and their managers to have effective career conversations. The launch of our new talent schemes, Aspire and Lead, has allowed us to provide further opportunities to develop leadership skills.

Our ‘early talent’ approach welcomes apprentices and interns and supports them to develop while they work.

2020–21 performance-related pay

In response to the impact of the pandemic, for 2020–21 we made some temporary changes to our in-year performance award scheme. These changes recognised that much of our workforce contributed to the national effort, with many colleagues being deployed to other Civil Service departments, local authorities or internally to other teams. The maximum award amount was reduced and we encouraged teams to make awards more often, for smaller values. This is so that more of the workforce could be recognised both in terms of outputs and the behaviours demonstrated during this time.

Given the pandemic, senior managers agreed to waive any bonus that might otherwise have been paid (in line with wider Civil Service pay policy) in 2020–21, and any end-of-year bonuses relating to the 2020–21 performance year that would have been paid in 2021–22.

Analysis of our instant recognition and in-year performance award schemes for 2020–21 shows that there is a very small difference between the value of awards and the percentage of employees who received an award when comparing the distributions of men and women. This does not indicate a statistically significant disparity. We will continue to monitor the distribution of awards.

Creating better gender balance

The demographics of the sectors we recruit from, which remain predominantly female, are likely to continue to have an impact on the gender balance of our inspection and regulatory workforce. We continue to use blind sifting in our recruitment process.

We use the Civil Service success profiles framework for recruitment and performance management. This is designed to attract and retain people of talent and experience from a range of sectors and all walks of life. We provide training in areas such as interview skills to build colleagues’ confidence, knowledge and understanding. We also provide training to interview panels to ensure that our interview practice is fair and open.

Although we have seen a small increase in the proportion of men being appointed to APT roles across the year, the pandemic had a significant impact on recruitment activity, so we cannot make any specific links to any actions taken.

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

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

Annex B: data table for the chart

This section contains the underlying data in an accessible table format for the chart.

Data for the chart: proportion of male and female employees by pay quartiles for the years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021

	Pay quartile lower - male	Pay quartile lower - female
2018	35	65
2019	36	64
2020	35	65
2021	38	62

	Pay quartile lower middle - male	Pay quartile lower middle - female
2018	29	71
2019	31	69
2020	36	64
2021	32	68

	Pay quartile upper middle - male	Pay quartile upper middle - female
2018	23	77
2019	23	77
2020	19	81
2021	21	79

	Pay quartile upper - male	Pay quartile upper - female
2018	47	53
2019	46	54
2020	44	56
2021	42	58

See the chart.

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.

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. ↩