What the Employment Rights Act 2025 means for schools

After a prolonged period of parliamentary debate, the Employment Rights Bill received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025 and is now law as the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA).

This marks the biggest shake-up of UK employment law in decades, strengthening employment rights and protections. For schools, this means significant changes to staff rights and obligations.

Headline reforms

• Changes to unfair dismissal rights: the ERA reduces the two-year service qualifying period for unfair dismissal to six months and removes the cap on unfair dismissal compensation. These changes are expected from 1 January 2027
• Fire and rehire: the ERA makes it automatically unfair to dismiss an employee who refuses to agree to changes to key contract terms: pay, hours, annual leave, pensions (important for schools considering changes to teacher pension arrangements) and any clause that would permit an employer to change these terms later without their consent. There is an exemption for employers in serious financial difficulty, but the threshold is high. A parallel amendment will protect employees from ‘fire and replace’ where agency workers replace dismissed employees. This change is expected from October 2026
• Guaranteed hours for zero-hours workers: the ERA will not place an outright ban on zero-hours contracts, but the changes go some way towards the government’s manifesto promise of ending “one-sided flexibility”. The rules require employers to provide workers on zero and low-hour contracts with predictability in relation to:
  1. Guaranteed hours
  2. Reasonable notice of shift work and schedules
  3. Reasonable notice of any change or cancellation to a shift
  4. Compensation if a shift is cancelled, moved or curtailed
• Following extensive consultation, these provisions will also apply to agency workers. These changes are expected to come into force in 2027
• Anti-harassment: the ERA includes a stronger duty for employers to ensure that all reasonable steps are taken to prevent sexual harassment, as well as liability for all types of harassment by third parties (from October 2026). In addition, disclosures related to sexual harassment will be added to the list of protected whistleblowing disclosures (from April 2026)
• Family-friendly rights and flexible working: the ERA introduces certain day one rights to support working parents in respect of paternity leave, parental leave and bereavement leave. These include making paternity and parental leave a day one right (from April 2026), as well as extending bereavement leave to those who experience a pregnancy loss before 24 weeks (in 2027)
• Strengthening trade unions: the ERA significantly strengthens trade union rights. Changes include steps to streamline the procedure for unions to apply for statutory recognition (and the right to bargain collectively for their members). Other proposals will give unions greater rights to access workplaces to organise and recruit, which is likely to lead to more applications for union recognition. Rights for union representatives will also be enhanced
• Enforcement: as part of the ERA, the government will increase the time limit for bringing most claims in an employment tribunal to six months and will establish a Fair Work Agency (FWA) to enforce certain worker rights.

What happens now?

The Bill has received Royal Assent, which means the ERA is now law. However, there is still a significant amount of detail to be set out in secondary legislation. The government is publishing consultations on the ERA that will inform this further detail. Schools may want to contribute to these consultations to shape how reforms affect operations, costs and flexibility.

Most of the changes are planned to come into effect on a phased basis, rolled out gradually during 2026 and 2027.

What this means for schools

Schools should be mindful of the upcoming changes and plan accordingly for the new landscape. Specifically, schools should:

• Review recruitment policies, processes and arrangements for probationary periods and reviews to reflect shorter qualifying periods for unfair dismissal
• Review and update contract templates and policies ahead of the changes coming into effect
• Audit current arrangements for zero-hours working and plan for the potential impact of the associated reforms
• Consider training for management and HR teams on the implications of the ERA and how to best prepare to reduce risk in key areas. We regularly support schools with such training and can offer bespoke packages based on your requirements.

It’s also important to stay informed. We’ll continue to keep schools updated as further detail in relation to the various reforms is clarified.