The Phoenix Rising: The SSSNB, updated for September 2026

Key Takeaway: The School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB) — axed in 2010 — was reinstated under the Employment Rights Act 2025 and formally confirmed by the DfE’s 9 July 2026 consultation response. It will replace the NJC as the negotiating body for the roughly 854,200 support staff working in England’s state-funded schools, setting a national pay-and-conditions floor for maintained schools and academies alike. UNISON is now consulting its own members (15 September – 6 October 2026) ahead of the body’s planned Autumn 2026 constitution. No pay changes take effect before the 2027-28 financial year.

Rising from the Ashes: A brief history

The SSSNB is not a new idea. It was first established in 2009, under the then Labour government, to create a national pay and conditions framework for school support staff.

In October 2010, the incoming Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government abolished it before any agreement had taken effect. Then Education Secretary Michael Gove said the body “does not fit well with the Government’s priorities for greater deregulation” of school workforce pay and conditions.

The result: 14 years of fragmentation. Many maintained schools continued to follow the general local government “Green Book” via the National Joint Council (NJC) — the same body that negotiates pay for around 1.4 million council staff, from librarians to refuse collectors — while academies had the flexibility to set their own terms. This contributed to pay disparities for people doing similar jobs in neighbouring schools.

Reinstated — and now confirmed

The Employment Rights Bill received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025, becoming the Employment Rights Act 2025, under the then Labour government led by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, who made the SSSNB’s reinstatement a priority.

Since then, the political picture has moved on. Starmer resigned as PM in July 2026 and was succeeded by Andy Burnham, who appointed Lucy Powell as Education Secretary in his first reshuffle. The DfE under Powell has continued to take the SSSNB forward: on 9 July 2026 it published its response to the 2025 consultation, confirming how the body will actually work.

How the SSSNB will actually work

The Act gives the Secretary of State for Education the power to refer matters to the SSSNB and to ratify its agreements through regulations, which then incorporate the new terms directly into school support staff’s employment contracts. By law, these regulations cannot worsen an employee’s existing terms, nor stop an employer offering more favourable ones.

The SSSNB sits under a new, bespoke legal framework created specifically for school support staff — separate from the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, which governs ordinary employer-union bargaining. That means local collective bargaining for better-than-statutory-minimum terms can continue alongside the SSSNB, not instead of it. According to DfE figures, 854,200 support staff (517,500 full-time equivalent) worked in England’s state-funded schools in 2024/25 — around half the directly employed school workforce — and it is this group the SSSNB is designed to cover.

What the 9 July 2026 consultation response confirms

Scope: directly employed support staff up to and including middle leadership — teaching assistants, school business professionals, administrators, technicians, catering staff — including academy trust staff working from off-site or central-office locations. Around 92% of consultation respondents backed including these off-site staff (a change from the Act’s original drafting, which covered only staff working wholly at a school site).
Exclusions: executive leaders and staff with strategic responsibilities (e.g. finance directors) are excluded — a further change from the Bill’s original drafting, which had included executive roles. Agency workers are also excluded “at this stage”, citing limited evidence.
A floor, not a ceiling: the SSSNB sets minimum statutory terms. Staff already on better terms keep them; those below the minimum are uplifted once terms are negotiated. Employers can still offer more.
Decoupling from the NJC: the SSSNB replaces the current system that exempts academy trusts from national pay and conditions, giving support staff a dedicated, school-specific forum instead of one shared with unrelated local government roles.
First priority: maternity pay — described as the first national improvement to support staff maternity provision in 25 years — alongside the next annual pay uplift.

Timeline

2026-27 financial year: current NJC-based arrangements continue unchanged.
15 September – 6 October 2026: UNISON consults its school support staff members on the SSSNB, ahead of its constitution.
Autumn 2026: the SSSNB is formally constituted, following secondary legislation and consultation with the TUC on which unions will represent support staff on the body.
2027-28 financial year, at the earliest: first negotiated pay and conditions outcomes take effect.

Impact on Leadership & Strategy

Budgetary pressure: standardised national pay scales may raise wage costs, particularly for trusts that have historically set lower local rates.
Union engagement: trusts will need to engage nationally with UNISON, GMB and Unite as the recognised negotiating unions sitting within the SSSNB.
Policy alignment: local pay policies and staff handbooks will need review once SSSNB statutory minimums are set, to ensure they reflect the new floor.

Preparing for 2027-28

No pay or contract changes take effect until 2027-28 at the earliest. But now is the time to audit current contracts against the confirmed scope, identify any off-site trust staff newly captured by the definition, and build the potential for pay uplifts into medium-term financial planning.

How FusionHR & SAMpeople can help

If you would like a strategic review of your People Strategy, specifically how the SSSNB and the Employment Rights Act 2025 may affect your School/Trust’s long-term strategy and people planning, contact our Education Specialist HR Consultants on 01924 827 869.