Ontario Teacher Salary Grid 2026: What a Lender Uses Now

The 2022-2026 Ontario teacher collective agreements ran to August 31, 2026, and the last grid they set took effect September 1, 2025. Until your board publishes a new schedule, a lender uses the salary your board letter and current pay stub show, not a raise that has not been settled.

Key takeaways

• The 2022-2026 teacher collective agreements cover September 1, 2022 to August 31, 2026. Their last salary schedule took effect September 1, 2025.
• Across those four years, the TDSB secondary agreement lists general wage increases of 3.0, 3.0, 2.75 and 2.50 per cent.
• When this guide was written, this site had not verified a 2026-27 grid for any board it tracks. Check your own board before relying on any figure.
• A lender reads the salary on your board letter and current pay stub. A raise that is still being bargained is not income on paper yet.
• If a new grid lands while you are buying, ask HR for an updated letter. Ask the lender how it will treat any retroactive lump sum.

Is there a 2026-27 Ontario teacher salary grid yet?

Not one that this site has verified. The current round of teacher agreements, the ones that set the grids most people find when they search, ran for four years. The Simcoe County ETFO agreement states the term plainly: four years from September 1, 2022 to August 31, 2026 inclusive, set under section 41(1) of the School Boards Collective Bargaining Act, 2014. It also says the agreement expires on August 31, 2026, subject to the Education Act and the Labour Relations Act.

Each local agreement lays out one salary schedule per school year. The Halton elementary agreement, for example, has a schedule for September 1, 2024 to August 31, 2025 and a final one for September 1, 2025 to August 31, 2026. A grid for 2026-27 needs a new agreement behind it. When boards and unions settle and ratify new terms, boards publish the new schedules.

That is why a search for "Ontario teacher salary grid 2026" or "QECO pay grid 2026" mostly turns up 2025-26 tables. They are the latest published figures, labelled with the year they cover. Read the date on any grid before you use it.

What did the last grid pay?

The TDSB secondary agreement prints the general wage increases built into its salary scales: 3.0 per cent on September 1, 2022, 3.0 per cent on September 1, 2023, 2.75 per cent on September 1, 2024 and 2.50 per cent on September 1, 2025. The Halton elementary grid moved by the same 2.50 per cent in its final year, which you can check by comparing its last two schedules.

The table shows the bottom and top of two published grids for the last two years of the agreement. Use it to see the scale of a year's change, not as your own salary.

Which salary does a lender use while bargaining continues?

A lender works from documents. For a permanent teacher, that is the board employment letter, which states your status, category, step and annual salary, and a recent pay stub that matches it. A wage increase that has not been agreed is not on either document, so it is not income a lender can count.

The useful point for a buyer is that your salary today is already known. A teacher who has moved up a step this September, and whose letter shows it, can apply on that figure now. Waiting for a new grid only changes the number if and when the board pays it and puts it on paper.

At the top of the 2025-26 grids, the money is real. Using a qualifying rate of 6.00 per cent, a 25-year amortization, the 39 per cent gross debt service limit, $3,000 a year of property tax and $100 a month for heat, a TDSB secondary teacher at Group 4 step 10 on $120,057 has an illustrative maximum of about $555,100 with no other debts. One year earlier, on $117,129, the same arithmetic gives about $540,300. A year of grid increase moved this example by roughly $14,800.

The qualifying rate rule is set by OSFI: the greater of the contract rate plus 2 percentage points or 5.25 per cent. CMHC lists 39 per cent gross and 44 per cent total debt service as its maximum ratios. These are estimates, not approvals.

What changes for LTO and occasional teachers?

• LTO pay is the grid rate prorated by the day. Ontario school boards run a 194-day school year under Ontario Regulation 304, so a daily LTO rate is commonly the annual grid figure divided by 194. Until a new grid is published, that daily figure comes from the 2025-26 schedule your board is paying.
• Daily occasional pay is its own rate in each agreement. A lender usually averages two years of your actual occasional earnings from T4s and Notices of Assessment, so a pending grid has little effect on the figure it uses this year.
• New teachers starting this fall should make sure their first letter shows the category and step HR has actually set, since that letter carries the file.

What if a new grid arrives in the middle of a purchase?

If a new agreement is ratified while you are between an accepted offer and closing, two things can happen on paper. Your board may issue new salary figures for the current year, and it may pay a lump sum to cover increases back to an earlier date.

Ask HR for an updated employment letter once the new salary is in place. Tell your mortgage agent about any retroactive payment and ask the lender how it treats it. A one-time catch-up payment and a higher annual salary are two different things on an application, so keep them separate in your own planning too.

What to do this week

• Check the date on any grid you are reading. A 2025-26 schedule covers September 1, 2025 to August 31, 2026.
• Pull your most recent pay stub and confirm your category and step.
• Ask HR for an employment letter that states your annual salary as paid now.
• Run that salary, not a hoped-for raise, through the affordability calculator.
• Bookmark your board's grid in the salary grid tool and check it again when a new agreement is announced.

• The Ontario teacher salary grid tool →
• Teacher affordability calculator →
• Get a free teacher mortgage review →

General information for Ontario teachers, not advice on your own file. Lender and insurer rules vary. Confirm your salary and schedule with your board.

Sources and dates

Figures in this guide come from the sources below. Each entry shows the date the source published it, or the date it was accessed when the source does not state one. After the review date, treat any number as a starting point and check the source.

• ETFO Simcoe County (SCETF) collective agreement, September 1, 2022 to August 31, 2026 (C3.2 Term of Agreement) (as of 2025-26)
• OSSTF Toronto (TTBU) collective agreement 2022-2026 (L7.1 salary scales and general wage increases) (as of 2025-26)
• ETFO Halton local collective agreement, salary grids (L10.01.02 and L10.01.03) (as of 2025-26)
• Ontario Regulation 304, School Year Calendar, Professional Activity Days (Education Act) (as of 2026-08-26)
• OSFI, minimum qualifying rate for uninsured mortgages (as of 2026-01-29)
• CMHC, mortgage loan insurance for homeownership: debt service ratios (as of 2026-10-27)