Attracting and keeping talented professionals in the career development sector is increasingly challenging. The CDI actively draws on insights from our CDI Big Listen surveys and works across the sector to build a sustainable career development workforce for the future.
Our Fair Pay campaign, launched at the start of 2026, supports UNISON's work with the UK Government on the School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB) and challenges recruitment that offers low pay, terms or benefits.
See below for the work the CDI are doing and how you can add your voice to improve pay for careers staff.
The key area of concern is fair pay in schools and colleges in England. With pay decisions devolved to each school, college or trust, we see variation in the pay levels - for both employed and contracted staff - with the average below teachers' starting salaries.
There are also too many examples of schools offering well below even this level, failing to reflect the qualifications, experience and impact of careers staff.
Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, has stated that she champions better pay for school support staff and the Department of Education (DfE) is working to reintroduce the SSSNB. While the CDI appreciates that some members would prefer careers staff to be classified as teaching staff, supporting the SSSNB is the most likely route to achieving sustainably higher pay in schools in England in the near term.
The Employment Rights Act, passed in December 2025, lays down the legislation needed to restore the School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB) – a negotiating body that will cover pay, terms and conditions, and access to training for school support staff in all types of state-funded schools in England.
Elected representatives from UNISON’s National Schools Committee are currently involved in discussions with the Department for Education, the other recognised support staff trade unions (GMB and Unite) and employer representatives about the detail of the SSSNB. These groups are making important decisions such as the composition of the body, how negotiations will work, and transition arrangements for school support staff when the SSSNB comes into being.
When the negotiating body is launched, UNISON will sit on the trade union side and so will bring the views of UNISON members to the table. As the union with the most schools members, we will have the largest number of representatives on the trade union side of the SSSNB. UNISON will provide updates to this work on the School Support Staff Negotiation Body page.
We are working on a template email for CDI members who work in schools to send to Bridget Phillipson to voice your support for fair pay for careers staff in the SSSNB. It is critical that we show the Secretary of State how much this means to careers professionals, the value of the work you do and how setting benchmarked standards will ensure we have a sustainable careers workforce for now and the future.
The template will be available here and promoted on social media as soon as it is available.
We want to encourage employers to offer a fair salary and benefits to careers staff and contractors. The CDI have developed a letter to be sent to recruiters who are advertising roles that are deemed to be well below a fair salary.
While we want an average salary of at least £30k, we will start by sending an email to recruiters where we see they are offering less than £27k per annum or pro-rata for part-time. This will ensure they are aware of their statutory duties, highlight the value of professionally qualified careers staff and encourage them to improve their offer to attract qualified applicants.
If you see an advert for a role that is under £27k per annum, please forward it to [email protected] so we can respond.
The CDI occasionally includes low paid roles on our Careers in Careers jobs board, as our aim has been to make every role in the profession available, creating a single destination for anyone looking for a job in the careers sector.
However, we are now exploring how we can restrict or remove adverts that are well below what we would consider to be fair pay. This will take some time as the platform is managed by a third party and some of the adverts are automatically imported from other jobs sites to give access to the widest range of relevant roles.
We will update once we have completed the review.
As the next phase of our Valuing Careers campaign, we are developing an employer pack to send to leadership teams in schools in England. The aim of the pack goes beyond fair pay, to raise the profile of the value of careers guidance for their pupils, their statutory duties and the need to employ and support qualified staff as careers leaders, careers advisers and careers support staff.
The pack will be developed to make it simple for school leaders to see what is needed to support their young people as they progress beyond school.
The pack is currently in development then will be tested before being released. We are planning an accompanying pack for school careers staff to initiate a conversation with their leadership. This includes fair pay, making time and funding available for CPD and more.
We'll share more once the employer pack is ready.
The CDI Big Listen survey has included questions on likelihood to leave the profession, and why, since 2021. The results show ongoing high levels of people saying they are likely or very likely to leave the profession within the next two years (29% of respondents in January 2025).
The main reasons given are retirement (36% in 2025) and poor pay and benefits (23% in 2025). This highlights the twin challenges facing career development - of poor pay causing people to leave and the challenge of attracting new entrants to replace older professionals as they retire.
As a member of Careers England, the CDI supported additional research among Careers England members and those organisations' employees in autumn 2022.
23% of staff stated they were likely to leave the profession, though employers expected the rate to be higher at 38%. Poor pay and limited development opportunities were key reasons cited for being likely to leave the profession, with 62.5% of employers saying they aren't able to pay a salary that reflects the skills, qualifications and experience of their staff.
The report highlighted the growing concern among careers providers about the longer-term sustainability of the profession due to difficulties faced in recruiting new talent and retaining existing talent.
In 2023, Claire Johnson, then CDI Head of Professional Development & Standards and Caroline Green from Ask The Talent Cycle led a webinar exploring the challenges facing the career development profession in attracting and retaining talent.
