Attracting and keeping talent in the career development sector is increasingly challenging. The CDI actively draws on insights from our Big Listen surveys and works across the sector to build a sustainable career development workforce.
Our Fair Pay campaign, launched at the start of 2026, supports the UK Government's reintroduction of the School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB) and challenges recruitment that offers low pay, terms or benefits.
See below for all the work the CDI are doing and how you can add your voice to improve pay and conditions for careers staff.
A key area of concern is fair pay in schools in England. With pay decisions devolved to each school or trust, we see wide variation in pay levels - for both employed and contracted staff - with average pay below teachers' starting salaries.
There are too many examples of schools offering low pay that fails to reflect the qualifications, experience and value of careers staff.
Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, has stated that she champions better pay for school support staff and the Department for 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 an important step 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 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 Negotiating Body page.
We have produced a template email for career development professionals working in schools to send to Bridget Phillipson in support of the SSSNB and fair pay for careers staff. It shows 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, now and in the future.
Feel free to amend the email to your own voice, but please keep it respectful and professional. The template includes space to add your own example of adding value to a young person you have supported. Naturally, you will need to respect client confidentiality but an example demonstrates the real-world value you bring.
Download the SSSNB email to Bridget Phillipson now and add your voice on behalf of the profession.
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 staff. We will also send letters to advertisers who are looking for unqualified staff to undertake roles which require professional qualifications.
The aim is to ensure employers 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 or doesn't seek appropriate qualifications, please forward it to [email protected] so we can respond.
Low paid roles are occasionally advertised on the CDI's Careers in Careers jobs board, as our aim has been to make every role in the profession available so there is a single destination for anyone looking for a job in the careers sector.
However, we are now exploring if and how we can remove adverts that are below what we would consider to be fair pay. This isn't straightforward 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 here once we have completed the review.
As the next phase of our Valuing Careers campaign, we are developing an employer pack, with the initial audience being 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 make it easy for school leaders to see what is needed to support their young people as progress through and beyond school.
The pack is in development then will be tested before being released. We are planning accompanying material for school careers staff to support conversations 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.
