Quebec Teacher Salary by Step: What You Take Home

In Quebec, a teacher does not negotiate their salary. It is set by a public scale, the same one in every school service centre, and only two things decide where you land on it: schooling and experience. Here is that scale, step by step, and what is left of it once the deductions are taken.

One single scale, the same across Quebec

A public-system teacher's salary is not set school by school. It is written into the 2023-2028 national agreement, at clause 6-5.03, under the heading "Échelle de traitement annuel" (annual salary scale).

It appears in the agreement signed with the FSE-CSQ (in French), and exactly the same table, with the same amounts, appears in the one signed with the APEQ (also in French), on the English-language school service centre side. One scale, 16 steps, with no distinction between preschool, elementary, secondary, vocational training and adult education.

One detail matters for any comparison: this scale gives an annual salary, not an hourly rate. The amount covers the whole school year, statutory holidays and vacation included.

The salary scale in force in 2026

Here are the 16 steps, with the column that applies right now and the one that takes over next.

From the first step to the last, the salary goes from $54,119 to $105,432: almost double, for the same job.

Why the raise does not land in September

The column headings carry an unusual date. The agreement does not raise the scale on July 1 or at the start of the school year: it raises it "from the 141st working day" of each school year — by 2.5% for 2025-2026, and by 3.5% for 2026-2027.

A teacher's work year is 200 days. The 141st day therefore falls in the last third of the school year, not at its start. In practice: through the fall of 2026, the left-hand column is still the one being paid, and the 3.5% raise only arrives late in the school year.

What decides your step

Two variables, and only two. The Ministry of Education puts it this way on its page about assessing a teacher's schooling (in French): salary "est déterminé en fonction de deux variables" — it is determined by two variables, the assessment of schooling in complete years and the recognition of relevant years of experience.

Experience gives the starting step: the first year of teaching corresponds to step 1, the second to step 2, and so on. Schooling then adds steps on top. The agreement provides for an addition of 2 steps for schooling assessed at 17 years, 4 steps at 18 years, 6 steps at 19 years or more, and 8 steps at 19 years or more with a third-cycle doctorate.

The effect is far from marginal. A teacher in their very first year, but whose schooling is assessed at 17 years, is not paid $54,119: they are placed at step 3, which is $63,142. Two more years of study, and the same beginner starts at step 5, at $68,222.

From gross salary to what lands in the account

The annual salary is paid in 26 instalments, one every 2 Thursdays, and each day worked is worth 1/200 of the annual salary. That is what makes it possible to be paid during school breaks, when no day is actually worked.

Between that salary and the amount deposited, there are three contributions and two income taxes.

• The QPP, Quebec's public pension plan. You contribute on your work income up to an annual ceiling set at $74,600 for 2026, with a second contribution tier between that ceiling and $85,000. On this scale, only the last few steps go past the first ceiling.
• Employment Insurance. The employee rate is lower in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada, because parental leave is covered by a separate plan here: 1.30% in 2026, on insurable earnings capped at $68,900.
• The QPIP, the plan that pays for that parental leave. The employee share is 0.430% of salary in 2026, under the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan.
• Federal tax, charged in brackets: 14% on the first $58,523 of taxable income, then 20.5% on the portion above that.
• Quebec tax, which has its own brackets, also progressive, and which is added on top of the federal one.

Here is what those five lines come to on a teacher's salary at step 1.

And at the top of the scale, at step 16:

Every amount in those two tables is computed from the 2026 brackets, exactly as in the net salary calculator — where you can enter your own step instead of the ones in the example.

One step up: how much of it do you keep?

Going from step 1 to step 2 means $3,615 more gross over the year. After tax and contributions, about $2,300 of it is left — slightly less than two thirds.

The explanation is the marginal rate: the rate applied to the last dollar earned, not to the whole salary. And step 1 sits at a particular spot on the tax scale. At $54,119, it lands just under the threshold of Quebec's second tax bracket, set at $54,345 in the 2026 brackets the calculator applies. The marginal rate there is about 26%. One step higher, it climbs to about 31%.

Across the full length of the scale, the gap stays substantial: between step 1 and step 16 there is $51,313 more gross, of which about $31,400 is left as net pay — close to 61% of the way. The same mechanism applies to any raise, whatever the job.

What the scale does not tell you

• Supplements and premiums. A teacher responsible for a school building receives an annual supplement of $1,945 in the column currently in force, rising to $2,013 in the next one. The agreement also provides premiums for remote regions, which concern only certain areas.
• Part-time work and substitute teaching. The scale describes a full-time salary. An 80% workload pays 80% of the salary, and occasional substitute teaching follows separate pay rules.
• A different measure, and a different number. Job Bank publishes, from Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey, hourly wages for teachers in Quebec: $27.47 to $56.49 at the secondary level and $27.00 to $55.30 at the elementary level, for the 2023-2024 reference period. Those figures do not contradict the scale, they measure something else — a reported hourly wage, part-time and substitute work included, over earlier years.
• The rest of the compensation. Pension plan, group insurance, job security: none of that shows up in an annual salary figure, and all of it weighs in a comparison. That is also why a teacher's scale compares poorly with another public-sector scale on salary alone — the nurses' scale follows its own rules.