Full maternity pay for teachers across the UK should be increased to 26 weeks to help stem the exodus of women in their 30s from classrooms, a union leader has said.

Matt Wrack, general secretary of the NASUWT teachers’ union, said it was a “national scandal” that so many teachers who quit said inadequate maternity support was one of the reasons.

He said government efforts to retain teachers would be undermined without urgent improvement to maternity, paternity and flexible working entitlements.

The government recently announced plans in its schools white paper to double teachers’ entitlement to full maternity pay from four weeks to eight, starting in the 2027/8 academic year. The Department for Education billed this as the first time national maternity pay for teachers had been improved in more than 25 years.

Wrack reminded delegates attending the NASUWT annual conference in Birmingham on Friday, however, that maternity pay was significantly more generous elsewhere in the public and private sectors.

Female firefighters in the West Midlands are entitled to 52 week’s leave on full pay, said Wrack, a one-time firefighter and former general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, who was giving his first conference address as NASUWT leader.

Women in their 30s are the biggest single group leaving teaching. An NASUWT poll of 2,000 UK teachers showed 95% found it difficult to balance their job with being a parent and 70% seriously considered resigning because of the effect on their children.

More than three-quarters (77%) of respondents who had taken maternity, paternity or adoption leave in the past five years would have liked to have taken more time off but financial reasons prevented most from doing so.

The survey also revealed the failure of some school managers to support pregnant teachers and their partners, with some contributors reporting that requests to attend antenatal appointments were refused.

One teacher, who was suffering from severe morning sickness, asked if something could be put in place should she need to leave her class to be sick. She was refused and had to vomit in a bucket in a cupboard in the classroom.

Another said: “I had to have minor surgery whilst pregnant. Was made to feel guilty taking time off. Had to leave work on three occasions as I was bleeding. Was suggested by headteacher that I was overreacting. Turned out I had an abnormal growth on my cervix.”

The NASUWT will now campaign for negotiations with governments across the UK to bring in the 26-week measure as part of efforts to improve maternity, paternity and flexible working rights for teachers.

Wrack told NASUWT members: “The DfE made great fanfare about the fact that the period on full pay for maternity leave would double. Of course that sounds good – until we dig a little deeper.

“Full maternity pay will indeed double, from four weeks to eight weeks. But when we start to look deeper, the fanfare fades. The truth is that many parts of the public sector and the private sector already have much better maternity provision. So doubling from not much still leaves us with … not much.”

The DfE said: “Last year saw one of the lowest rates of teachers leaving the profession since 2010, and we are already delivering on our pledge to recruit and retain 6,500 more talented teachers with over 2,300 more secondary and special schoolteachers in classrooms this year.”