Powerful sentiments were expressed at the last conference of the old NUT teaching union - or was it the first of the new NEU? It was both, of course. One of many challenges to government, denounced in a conference resolution, was the immensity of salaries paid to the chief executives of some multi-academy trusts.
Take the Harris Federation, by many measures the most successful MAT in the country and undoubtedly making a real difference for children. It would be hard to deny that it’s well run. But how is the reward for its boss calculated at more than £500k? What is a “fair rate of pay” in that context?
Executive pay is a universal conundrum. In recent decades we’ve increasingly seen spotlights being shone on the pay of CEOs of large businesses. Should one person (usually a man) earn many multiples of what the firm’s lowest-paid employee gets?
In commerce, the boss of a vast widget-making firm may relate their leadership directly to the number of widgets manufactured and sold, and subsequent profit derived. Similarly, no one complains about the earnings of musicians who sell millions of albums, nor of a novelist like J. K. Rowling whose books are outsold only by the Bible. Such fortunes are directly linked to sales (but don’t get me started on male footballers...).
Education is different. It certainly produces, in a wonderful, indefinable and, in the best sense, immeasurable way. Yet, despite many governments’ attempts to the contrary, it’s impossible to quantify that intangible output in the manner of sales and profit margins.
Indeed, education’s always short of dosh. One Whitehall justification for forcing academies into chains is the savings to be achieved. Economies of scale mean that one finance manager can control the budget of a dozen schools, instead of having one in each. We’re assured that the buying power of chains ensures that they can buy in resources, even supply teachers, at the lowest possible cost.
It’s a mantra still echoed by former education secretary Michael Gove in his new role at agriculture, apparently convinced that only big farms are economical and ignoring smaller family-run concerns. Yet, is big really beautiful?
Teachers on the frontline deserve rewards
Reports of increasing numbers of academy chains running deficits suggests that scale may not provide economy: are those central organisations just too big, too heavy and too costly? One executive head may, indeed, run several schools, and do so with great acumen: yet each individual school must still be managed on the ground, at least one senior figure taking charge day-to-day.
Who earns the “danger money”, then? Does the multi-academy CEO, cocooned at the centre of the larger organisation, really carry the can? Do they take the flak for individual results in individual schools? Do they deal on the ground with the effects of overworked, demoralised teachers whose pay and support are cut year-on-year?
Who handles the angry parents, or tries to help the mentally ill child waiting nine months for support from child and adolescent mental health services? Not the CEO, I suspect. It seems to me that the people facing those difficulties on the ground, day in, day out, should receive the big salary.
Last autumn, Sir Anthony Seldon, vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham and previously an independent school head, criticised excessive pay in both sectors. How, he asked, can university lecturers worried about their pensions observe with equanimity the salaries of their VCs? Similarly, hard-pressed teachers are unimpressed by the executive principal sweeping into school in a huge BMW.
Schools work best when there is a sense of collegiality, of shared toil, shared challenge, shared achievements: and some fairness in pay structures. If the money and power are concentrated at the MAT’s head office, and the school workforce feels both remote and insulted by the salary differentials, it’s no wonder things aren’t going well.
This wasn’t a union conference having a rant. It was an expression of deeply felt pain and injustice. It deserves a hearing.
Dr Bernard Trafford is a writer, educationalist and musician. He is a former headteacher of the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, and past chair of HMC. He is currently interim headteacher of the Purcell School in Hertfordshire. He tweets @bernardtrafford
To read more of his columns, view his back catalogue.
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