Equality and diversity

Public sector bodies are required to publish data about their gender pay gap each year. The OfS has now published its gender pay gap data for 31 March 2025.

What is the gender pay gap?

The gender pay gap is the difference in the 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 have been required to publish information on their gender pay gap including:

• the mean gender pay gap
• the median gender pay gap
• the mean bonus gender pay gap
• the median bonus gender pay gap
• 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.

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.

OfS workforce

The OfS had a workforce of 503 on 31 March 2025. Due to the size of our organisation, small changes in our staffing can have a large impact on the gender pay gap we report.

Our gender pay gaps – key points

1. Our mean gender pay gap has been reducing since the OfS began to operate.

In March 2019, the mean rate was 13.6 per cent; this has been on a downward trend since then, to 7.3 per cent in March 2024. In the last year, however, there has been a slight increase to 9.2 per cent.

3. The OfS has a higher proportion of men in the top two pay quartiles than women. However, the number of men and women in the highest pay quartile has moved steadily closer over time.

In March 2025, women were distributed fairly evenly through the four pay quartiles:

• 45 per cent were in the top two pay quartiles (of which 23 per cent were in the top quartile compared with 29 per cent of men)
• 55 per cent were in the bottom two pay quartiles.

Of the men employed in the organisation:

• 59 per cent were in the top two pay quartiles (of which 29 per cent were in the top quartile)
• 41 per cent were in the bottom two pay quartiles.

In March 2025, in terms of absolute numbers, the top pay quartile contained:

• 71 women
• 49 men.

From March 2019, the total number of female staff in the highest earning quartile has increased by 28. The number of men in the top quartile has increased by 11.

4. The OfS employs twice as many women as men. This split has remained constant since March 2019.

As we have a predominately female workforce, small movements in male employees in and out of the organisation can create a high level of volatility in our gender pay gap reporting.

Actions and way forward

Over the last six years, we have considered the impact of the pay awards made to staff on our gender pay gap with a view to moving the median pay rate for women closer to the male median.

In our current people strategy (2024-28), we continue to review our approach to pay and reward. We conducted an equal pay audit in 2024 and are currently reviewing our reward package for employees.

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