Post-primary teacher salary in Ireland

What point of the scale am I on?

This is where most salary pages get it wrong. Your point is not always the same as your years of service, because one of the two scales carries incremental skips. Pick your situation:

The full pay scale, every point

Entered teaching on or after 1 January 2011

This scale already has the value of the PME / H.Dip allowance built into every point, under Circular 0059/2022. That is why it starts higher than the pre-2011 scale, which pays that allowance separately. It also carries incremental skips at points 4, 8 and 12.

Take-home assumes a single person with the personal and employee tax credits, no other income, and ASC at Single Public Service Pension Scheme rates. Your main superannuation contribution is deducted separately and depends on your scheme.

Entered teaching before 1 January 2011

Qualification allowances are paid separately to this group and can add several thousand euro a year on top of the figures below.

What you earn in each year of your career

For those on the 2011 entrants onward scale, points 4, 8 and 12 are skipped. When you are due to move to one of them you get one normal increment plus one skip, so point 3 leads to point 5, point 7 leads to point 9 and point 11 leads to point 13. That is why the top of the scale arrives after 24 years and not 27.

Rows marked skip are the years where you move up two points at once. The skipped points still exist on the scale with a value attached, you simply pass over them. Those on the pre-2011 entrants scale are not eligible for these skips and move one point a year.

What comes off your salary

Four deductions apply before your pay reaches your account, and one of them is specific to the public service.

Qualification allowances

Qualification allowances were abolished for all new beneficiaries from 1 February 2012. If you started teaching on or after that date you do not receive one. Teachers on the 2011 scale do have the PME allowance built into their scale points instead.

Entered teaching before 1 January 2011

Only one allowance from group (a) or (b) may be held together with one allowance from (c) to (g).

Entered teaching between 1 January 2011 and 31 January 2012

A much shorter list applies to this group.

Other allowances

These are tied to the job or the workplace rather than your qualifications, and are paid on top of your point on the scale.

Promoted posts: principal and deputy principal

These allowances are paid on top of your point on the scale, and the category depends on the size of the school. Post-primary schools run to seventeen categories, so the range is wider than at primary level.

These allowances are paid on top of your point on the scale, and the category depends on the size of the school. Post-primary schools run to seventeen categories, so the range is wider than at primary level.

Assistant principal posts

Substitute and casual rates

Casual and substitute staff are paid per day or per hour rather than on the annual scale. The second figure is the value of statutory annual leave accrued for each day or hour worked, paid on top.

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