Corporate report

SLC Gender Pay Gap Report 2024

Published 27 March 2025

1. What is the legislation?

In 2017, the government introduced legislation that made it statutory for organisations with 250 or more employees to report annually on their gender pay gap. Government departments are also covered by the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017 which came into force on 31 March 2017. These regulations underpin the Public Sector Equality Duty and require relevant organisations to publish their gender pay gap by 30 March annually. This includes the:

• proportions of male and female employees in each pay quartile
• mean and median gender pay gaps
• proportion of men and women who received bonuses
• mean and median gender bonus gaps

2. What does the gender pay gap mean?

The gender pay gap is a high-level overview of pay and bonuses within an organisation and shows the difference in the average pay between females and males in the workplace (within the snapshot date of 31 March 2024). This report is crucial for SLC to understand how our organisation is performing in relation to gender equality. We also want to effectively utilise the information in the report to show our commitment to achieving gender equality and reducing our pay gap.

Please note, a gender pay gap is different to any issues of equal pay (the legal requirement to pay men and women the same for equal work).

We will provide information on the following areas in this report:

• Percentage of females and males in the organisation
• Percentage of females and males in each hourly pay quarter
• Mean (Average) Gender Pay Gap for hourly pay
• Median (mid-point) Gender Pay Gap for hourly pay
• Percentage of females and males receiving bonus pay
• Mean (Average) Gender Pay Gap for bonus pay
• Median (mid-point) Gender Pay Gap for bonus pay

3. Staff included in the gender pay gap data

This report sets out Student Loans Company’s gender pay gap based on the snapshot of data taken of 31 March 2024. The data does not include agency workers, contractors, board members, or joiners after 20 March 2024 as they are not included in the payroll. There is also a set range of exclusions, as per the government guidelines, which we have adhered to.

4. Gender profile of SLC

SLC’s gender profile as of 31 March 2024 was 53.2% of the workforce were female and 46.8% of the workforce were male. This is a slight shift from the 2023 figures of 54% female and 46% male. 

	% Female	% Male
SLC March 2024	53.2%	46.8%
SLC March 2023	54.0%	46.0%

This is fairly consistent when compared with other similar public sector organisations, based on the civil service employment by department which was an average of 54.5% female and 45.5% male as of 31 March 2024.

5. Hourly Pay by Quarter

The methodology for section 5 and 6 uses annual salaries in March 2024 to calculate hourly pay.

The following details the proportion of females and males in each of the four hourly pay quarters. Pay is mainly represented by salary plus allowances and reducing for any salary sacrifice deductions.

The four quarter pay bands are created by dividing the total number of full-pay relevant employees into four equal parts from highest paid (upper hourly pay quarter) to lowest paid (lower hourly pay quarter).

From highest paid to lowest paid, the following table details the percentage of females in each pay quarter over the last two years and the percentage change:

	Women 2024	Men 2024	Women 2023	Men 2023	Change for women between 2023 and 2024
Upper hourly pay quarter (highest paid)	43.6%	56.4%	43.7%	56.3%	-0.1%
Upper middle hourly pay quarter	52.5%	47.5%	52.2%	47.8%	+0.3%
Lower middle hourly pay quarter	54.4%	45.6%	53.8%	46.2%	+0.6%
Lower hourly pay quarter (lowest paid)	56.3%	43.7%	59.9%	40.1%	-3.6%

As of 31 March 2024, for full-pay relevant colleagues, females occupy 43.6% of the highest paid jobs, a slight change to the previous year.

Conversely most employees in the lower pay quarter are female (56.3%) with a decrease of 3.6 percentage points on last year’s figure (59.9%). There has also been an increase of women in the upper middle and lower middle hourly quarterly pay of 0.3% and 0.6% respectively

Given the overall organization split of 53.2% female and 46.8% male, there is a higher percentage female in the lower pay quarter and higher percentage spilt of males in the upper pay quarter. These splits impact the overall outcome of the mean gender pay gap.

6. Gender Pay Gap

The mean female hourly rate is 10.5% lower than the mean male hourly rate. A decrease of 2.2 percentage points from 12.7% in 2023.

The median female hourly rate is 7.9% lower than the median male hourly rate. This increased by 3.8 percentage points from 4.1% in 2023.

The following table outlines the Gender Pay Gap figures for 2024 and 2023:

	2024 Pay Gap	2023 Pay Gap	Change (percentage points) between 2023 and 2024
Mean	10.5%	12.7%	-2.2%
Median	7.9%	4.1%	+3.8%

As the mean pay gap is calculated incorporating all the lowest and highest rates of pay, it therefore reflects the higher proportion of females working in lower paid roles and males working in higher paid roles as highlighted in section 5 of this report.

As we can see the median pay gap is lower, but it has increased. This is because it is calculated finding the mid-point of all colleagues’ rates of hourly pay and discards any outliers in relation to lowest and highest rates of pay.

We have seen good progress in the reduction of our mean pay gap by 2.2 percentage points and will continue to take action to reduce the gap further.

While the reduction in the mean gender pay gap is a positive step, we are yet to see the outcome of the 2-yeat pay case that has been implemented. The analysis for March 2025 will give us a better indication of the mean and median gaps and what work is still to be done to further reduce them.

7. Bonus Pay Gap

Bonus data includes all performance-related and non-consolidated payments made in the financial year 2023-24. They are a culmination of end-of-year performance-related pay, recognition, incentivisation payment and long service awards.

	2024 Bonus Pay Gap	2023 Bonus Pay Gap	2022 Bonus Pay Gap	Change (percentage points) between 2023 and 2024
Mean	3.9%	1.7%	12.6%	2.2%
Median	0%	0%	0%	0

The proportion of females receiving a bonus is 92.7% versus 92.6% of males with more females this year receiving a bonus payment.

It is acknowledged that the mean bonus gap has increased this year. The bonuses paid for 2022-23 included a flat-rate non-consolidated payment made to all relevant employees. In 2023-24 the bonuses paid also included another flat-rate non-consolidated payment, however the monetary value was higher this year and as the bonus in pro-rated to account for contractual hours, therefore the amounts paid to female and male colleagues varied more, generating more of a gap.

We will consider if additional analysis is required to identify specific areas which will support our action plans.

8. What are we doing to close the gender pay gap?

While we report a decrease in the mean gender pay gap within the organisation, we are aware that we still have work to do. The increase to the median pay gap was influenced by the additional back dated pay. We see this in an interim review that was conducted for September 2024, which saw the median reduce to 4.0%

We will continue to monitor our Gender Pay Gap over the coming year, undertaking the actions outlined in our action plan and with our 2023-2026 EDI Strategy which underpins SLC’s commitment to gender equality. We have highlighted obtaining gender parity in Grades 15 and above where men currently represent the majority and actively focus on reducing our gender pay gap.

Our key activity over the last 12 months has focused on the following areas:

8.1 Recruitment

To achieve our aim of having a more diverse workforce we are utilising a wider range of recruitment platforms including Indeed, Facebook, LinkedIn, Civil Service Careers and S1Jobs.

The purpose of these campaigns is to attract colleagues with protected characteristics with a gender focus on women since data analysis shows that although most of our workforce is female women are underrepresented in grades 15 and above. 

We use targeted recruitment methods, promoting job adverts which focus on our targeted focus areas (including gender), and make candidates aware of our commitment to working flexibly by clearly detailing our hybrid working policy and highlighting our flexible working opportunities.

We have updated job advertisements following the use of a ‘gender decoder’ and the creation of the new recruitment dashboard on workday have enhanced transparency will allow for a better insight into recruitment and progression themes within the organisation.

We have updated the diversity and inclusion information on our external careers website to reflect the aims of our current strategy and detail associated accreditations including ‘Employers for Carers- Engaged’ Awards.

We have reviewed our Recruitment and Selection policy, implementing changes to ensure a fairer process.

While our hiring managers receive unconscious bias training, we have now introduced diverse interview panels to assist us in finding the right person for the role, assist in breaking down barriers for candidates, and ensuring diverse decision making.

Following the development of our Equality Recruitment Dashboard this year we are now exploring options to improve our equality monitoring methods to provide improved data on our recruitment and internal processes to ensure we can better identify barriers in our processes, this will include identifying at which point women, drop out of our recruitment and development processes.

We have undertaken audits post recruitment to improve selection, for example by surveying successful candidates around their experience of the application and interviewing process. We are exploring options to audit unsuccessful candidates in the future. All colleagues who apply for internal roles are provided with meaningful feedback, ensuring they understand the decision made and which steps they can take to improve their chances in the future.

We have seen successful engagement with employability organisations and our return-to-work programme remains part of future Talent strategy. Building on the success of our previous returners to work campaigns to identify and deliver more women returners and to align with our focus on multi-generational teams.

We will continue to utilise SLC’s Women’s Development Network to support the uptake and promotion of our programmes and inform any potential barriers within our recruitment processes.

8.2 Performance Development

The focus for performance development has been strengthening the quality assurance aspects of the Workday system. We have analysed the effectiveness of objectives including the SMART element and the volume each colleague has, with an additional lens on the quality of the commentary supporting colleague development.

This enhances fairness, consistency, and transparency in how performance and development is managed for all SLC colleagues as well as supporting even better decision-making regarding performance-related bonuses to reduce bias.

Development is underway to further enhance our performance development system for all colleagues.

8.3 Pay and Recognition

Throughout 2023 and 2024, SLC implemented a new 2 year pay case. The pay case included plans to make pay fairer and more sustainable in the future. It is also aimed at ensuring that SLC pay, for our lower grades, is above the ever-increasing National Minimum Wage.

While compiling our pay case we completed an equality impact assessment (EIA) to ensure we fully understood the implications on the women employed within SLC. Our findings were that women would be positively impacted.

We will continue to consider how our new pay and grading framework can help to reduce our gender pay gap overall and look for additional targeted interventions within segments of the workforce.

We are hopeful that the pay changes effective from October 2023 and 2024 have had a positive impact on reducing the mean pay gap.

8.4 Performance Related Pay

The use and method of PRP within SLC is currently under review and we are working with a variety of stakeholder groups to help inform any changes to be made. At the forefront of these considerations is the desire to reward all colleagues fairly, transparently and ensure equity throughout. This will form a key decision point of any proposal and subsequent monitoring of the impacts.

8.5 Flexible Working

We recognise the importance of providing flexible working for all colleagues but know that women in particular benefit from flexible working practices.

Our commitment to flexible working continues, we introduced trials for our requests so we can see how they may work in practice, this has assisted us in achieving an over 97% approval rate with the option for trial periods also. Our Flexible Working Policy continues to support work life balance, allowing the use of flexitime as a day one privilege for all colleagues, promoting conversations around flexible working ‘from day 1’ and allowing up to 3 requests annually and because of these initiatives we have seen over a 200% increase in flexible working requests.

We updated our Flexible Working Policy in June 2023 to incorporate generous flexible working benefits based on colleague feedback and insights. This included the right to request flexible working from day one, access to the use of flexi-time, multiple flexible working requests in a 12-month period and additional flexible working models.

Following analysis of our Gender profiles, we know that we need to increase female representation in our more senior grades, which is why we have now updated the policy to apply to all colleagues and allow flexibility across the organisation, regardless of grade.

We also implemented a Hybrid Working Policy that supports all colleagues to work remotely, with up to 3 days at home and 2 days in the office.

During the review of our Flexible and Hybrid working policies we conducted an Equality Impact Assessment to ensure Women wouldn’t be negatively impacted by the proposed changes. This showed that the updated policies would positively impact the women employed by SLC.

We advertise our Flexible Working options in all job adverts to ensure we are attracting the best talent to SLC and bringing us in line with the wider Civil Service.

Part-time roles are advertised clearly in recruitment adverts providing increased flexibility for applicants, to assist in attracting those who may have caring or other responsibilities outside of the workplace.

8.6 Engagement

In the last report we highlighted the importance of establishing a Women’s Network gain further insight and better understand the lived experiences women face in SLC.

SLC Colleague Network Framework was approved in 2023 with a new Women’s Development Network - ‘RISE’ (Resilience, Inspiration, Support and Empowerment)  established in May 2024.

Engagement with the network has resulted in further exploring insights in relation to internal and external hires contributing to our Gender Pay Gap.  Discussions with members have resulted in themes for action in 2025 including a focus on empowerment, mentoring and imposter syndrome.

This year we are celebrating International Women’s Day with the RISE network and colleagues in our Technology Group(TG) involved in a variety of activities focusing on the need to ‘Accelerate Action’ in taking swift and decisive steps to achieve gender equality, an ambition which aligns with our aims for both the Technology Group Directorate and the wider organisation as part of our Equality Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.

This network will continue to provide insights on how the organisation can address any real or perceived barriers women face in relation to work life balance, career progression and personal development, which will provide insights to support the reduction of our Gender Pay Gap.

8.7 Career Progression and Development

Career Coaching has been introduced as an enduring development offering which is delivered monthly across the organisation. This provides colleagues the opportunity to meet with a coach to explore career aspirations and thus take ownership of their own professional development by then accessing on demand learning via Workday and Civil Service Learning. Leap of Faith was also launched as a development tool to enable colleagues to spend an hour, two hours, or half a day exploring what it’s like to work in another department or directorate, gaining insight into a particular role or skill, and perhaps consider if their own skills and capabilities might fit for a potential move in future. Both learning opportunities support our existing and future female leaders and individual contributors at all levels to build a rewarding career at SLC.

Data analysis of training provided over the last 12 months shows that 61.4% of delegates were female. Over the next 12 months, we will continue to review the data to identify trends, obtain insights and understand the barriers to progression for women.

This year, we have scheduled Inclusive leadership development for our Executive Leadership, Senior Management Team and business partners.  This will increase knowledge in how to effectively lead and support colleagues, ensuring they thrive at SLC.

8.8 Diversity in STEM Roles

We are continuing to focus on attracting more females to the Technology Group (TG).

We have implemented a STEM woman working group, which has been involved in careers fairs and school visits. SLC has also been involved with various programmes including Hello World in England, Career Ready England and Scotland and sits on the Skills Development Scotland working group ‘Women into Tech’.

Getting more women into tech is not just about attraction for relevant posts, we know we need to encourage more women to consider a STEM-related career, therefore early intervention is required. One of the main aims of our school’s partnership programme is to support education and socialisation of many different careers stories and discuss requirements for future skills to influence choices for more young people.

We have carefully considered the recruitment methods for our Emerging Talent programme through the completion of an Equality Impact Assessment to ensure we are encouraging uptake from women whilst being fair and consistent.

This includes ensuring we have equal gender representation at interviews and flexibility and inclusiveness in recruitment processes. We have designed a 360 Assessment Centre process which is based on meta-skills, aptitude, and openness to learn, not just current ability. This has proven to be a key strength in allowing our Emerging Talent programme to support our Women in STEM agenda.

We participate in the ‘Women into Tech’ steering group set up by Skills Development Scotland and University partnerships. This involves female employees conducting information and ‘meet the expert’ sessions.

We have prioritised partnering with schools to encourage and support young women who are interested in STEM careers by promoting tech opportunities in SLC.

TG continues to positively support flexible working requests which allow our colleagues a better work life balance, improve health and wellbeing and enable those with caring responsibilities to undertake both roles effectively.

Official discussions are currently taking place to implement a Women in Tech/STEM Network within SLC. The purpose of this Network will be to encourage women to apply for and develop into Tech/STEM roles within SLC. The aim of this Network is to provide role models through the employees we currently have within this demographic.

An overall commitment to share Gender Pay Gap best practice using the SLC cross government and non- departmental public bodies networks and forge strong connections. Moving forward SLC aims to be involved in further initiatives to support the aims as above.

9. Gender Pay Gap Action Plan

We will continue to monitor progress against our Gender Pay Gap Action Plan which outlines key areas of focus in relation to Data, Recruitment, Retention (focus on Pay and Recognition and Performance Related Pay), Career Development (focus on Performance Development and Diversity in STEM Roles) and cultivating an Inclusive Culture through effective leadership, role modelling and inclusive working practices that remove bias and barriers to progression.

Key areas of focus for future activity are outlined below:

9.1 Data

• Continue to track progress conducting further analysis of our GPG every 6 months. Following additional analysis this year, further develop insights for Gender Pay Gap reporting in relation to grade and directorate outliers.
• Continue to obtain further insight/analysis of job families/directorates that have pay equity in the organisation to share best practice.
• Utilise the recruitment dashboard to collect data on applicants by gender and rates of females falling out of the recruitment process.
• Obtain further insight and analysis in relation to starting salary/ negotiation and internal and external hires.
• Undertake effective exit interviews to understand attrition rates by gender and identify themes for women leaving the organisation, particularly focus on grades 15 and above, where we see a greater percentage of men than women per grade.

9.2 Recruitment

• Utilise the Women’s Development Network to promote vacancies and encourage promotion opportunities.
• Implement gender specific recruitment targets with the aim of increasing diversity in shortlisting and interviewing grade 15 and above roles. Monitor and measure every 6 months.
• Review unconscious bias awareness training as part of the ‘License to Hire’ programme.
• Continue undertaking audits post-recruitment, widening the scope to include unsuccessful candidates.
• Continued focus on the Emerging Talent programme, building apprenticeship and, intern programmes such as Career Ready, to enable better career paths for those starting their working lives.
• Continue to promote part time and flexible working roles.

9.3 Pay and Recognition

• Ensure transparency and consistency in decisions regarding promotion and remuneration, including new hires. The impact of the refreshed Reward policy will be monitored in this respect.

9.4 Performance Related Pay

• Complete the review of the Performance Related Pay process. Engage with Senior Managers and PCS, throughout the pay remit process, to ensure any changes carefully consider fairness, transparency and any equality impacts as well as recognised best practice in this area.

9.5 Performance Development

• A continued focus on greater transparency regarding performance development processes.
• Ensure managers understand that their decisions need to be fair objective, and evidence based.

9.6 Career Development

• Ensure succession planning and talent management processes are transparent and consistent, establishing clear criteria for identifying high-potential colleagues for future leadership roles.
• Ensure ELT/SLT and their respective teams actively support gender equality in succession planning and talent management initiatives, particularly for grades 18 and above.
• Map progression routes for colleagues through programmes such as Leap of Faith, Career Coaching and Colleague Journeys to ensure all are aware of how they can progress within SLC, with a specific focus on gender.
• To ensure equal access to development opportunities, continue to undertake analysis of learning and development uptake by gender to identify trends, obtain insights and understand any potential barriers to access for women.
• Provide access to development opportunities at the point of need, i.e. coaching, mentoring and consider exploring the introduction of reverse mentoring to actively support women and others in their growth and development.

9.7 Flexible Working

• Continue to promote flexible working for all colleagues and keep are updating the Flexible Working policy under regular review to reflect this.
• Collect flexible working data broken down by department and gender to identify trends and potential correlation on Gender Pay Gap.
• Continue to ensure vacancies promoted as being available on a part-time or flexible basis where possible.
• Identify senior leadership members that are actively role modelling flexible and hybrid working to promote throughout the organisation.
• Promote the use of 1-1s to discuss how roles and workloads are compatible with flexible working patterns.

9.8 Engagement

• Continue to explore mechanisms to obtain further feedback on female lived experiences in SLC from a variety of sources including pulse surveys, employee engagement surveys and utlising the Women’s Development Network.

9.9 Diversity in STEM

• Continue to support the ‘We Are Tech Women network’ and participating in various STEM events to increase the number of women in technology roles in SLC.
• Continue ongoing activity as part of the STEM Women Steering group set up by Skills Development Scotland and University partnerships. Research additional opportunities to network and promote STEM opportunities for women.
• Continue partnering with schools to encourage and support young women who are interested in STEM careers by promoting tech careers to create a feeder pipeline for our Graduate Apprenticeship programme.
• Utilise the Women’s Development Network to attract and retain and support women into STEM roles in SLC.

10. Declaration

We confirm that data reported by the Student Loans Company is accurate and has been calculated according to the requirements and methodology set out in the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017.