Update: Shortly after I published this article, the BBC has led with the same issue on its website.
The headteacher of The Knole Academy in Sevenoaks, a moderately performing single school academy, was paid £210,000 in 2016-17 making her the highest paid academy head or Chief Executive in Kent and Medway. This is an increase of 35% over the past three years after what can only be described as an irresponsible series of decisions by Governors, bringing the whole process into disrepute, and undermining the credibility of the very real financial crisis in schools, as explained below. By contrast the Principal of Homewood School, the largest secondary school in the county, had a salary of just £110,000 last year, one of majority of secondary heads around or below £100,000.
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After Knole the next two highest paid heads are the Principals of Leigh Academy and Wilmington Academy, both part of the Leigh Academy Trust, who each received £200,000 in remuneration, including their roles as Directors of the Trust. They were followed by the CEOs of two of Kent’s largest Academy Trusts, both responsible for more than a dozen primary and secondary schools: Swale AT and Leigh AT at £190,000 and £180,000 respectively.
Grammar School Academy Headteachers are generally paid from around £85,000 to £110,000 annually, with Dartford Grammar School, the largest and most oversubscribed grammar school in the county on the latter sum. Highest paid Grammar School Head is at Rainham Mark Grammar, Medway. with £155,000 (£90,000 for HT salary, £65,000 for Academy Trust CEO), followed by Barton Court, Canterbury, at £125,000 (also a Trust CEO).
At primary level the previous highest earner, the Head of Meopham Community Academy, has now retired from his £150,000 salary post, his replacement being employed at less than half of that rate. The highest paid heads of schools or multi academy trusts I have found this time round are the same two single standing academies as previously: The Academy of Woodlands in Gillingham, £105,000 in 2015-16, and St Stephen’s Academy, a Junior school in Canterbury on, the same figure for 2016-17.
I look more closely at the Knole situation, and that of other high paying academies below.
I only have access to the figures for salaries of the highest paid staff at Academies or Multi-Academy Trusts, who are nearly always Headteachers or Chief Executives in the Accounts published by Companies House. I have not looked at every Academy Trust in Kent and Medway, but primarily those which came up in my previous survey of 2014-15 salaries and others which look interesting. However, I have subsequently been referred to a list of all Academy Trusts with at least one member of staff on over £150,000 for 2015-16, published by government, and I had identified all of these. In most cases I have published Accounts for 2016-17, others are still awaited, and I have consulted 2015-16 records for these. Salaries are generally quoted in £5,000 or £10,000 bands and in all cases I have chosen the lowest figure or given the range.
Comparisons
Local Schools
The three Tunbridge Wells non-selective schools all carry an Outstanding OFSTED rating: St Gregory’s Catholic School, salary £100,000); Skinners Kent Academy (Headteacher widely recognised as inspirational and transformational) salary £140,000; Tenax AT (Bennett Memorial Diocesan and CEO of three primary schools) salary £120,000.
The two Brook Learning Trust Schools, Hayesbrook school Tonbridge and High Weald Academy, Cranbrook, both have a headteacher on £90,000 or less; Hillview School’s Headteacher is on £90,000. None of the three West Kent grammar school headteachers has a salary of over £100,000 per annum.
The Headteacher of Amherst School, the high achieving Junior School just down the road from Knole is paid an annual salary of £70,000.
Other
The Corporate Director for Education and Young People’s Services, Patrick Leeson, retired on a salary of £168,016 last year, with a small expenses budget in addition.
The Chief Executive Officer of Aquila, the Diocese of Canterbury Academy Trust was paid £70-80,000 for 2015-16, with just three others, probably headteachers, earning £60-70,000 the maximum salary for the 17 heads of primary schools in the Trust.
The Vice Chancellor of University for the Creative Arts based in Canterbury, Maidstone, Rochester and three other sites, salary £190,000 in 2015-16.
The Principal of Hadlow College with 1800 full time further and HE students was paid £204,000.
Principals of the other Kent FE Colleges, including West Kent College with its 4500 students, were all paid less than £200,000, and all manage large and complex multi-site enterprises offering a vast variety of full-time and part-time courses.
Knole Academy
Salaries
At the time of my previous survey, the Principal had been paid £155,000 in 2013-14, rising to £175,000 in 2014-15 because of a ‘performance bonus’, although the school had been relegated to ‘Requires Improvement’ by OFSTED. Since then there has been a leap to £195,000 for 2015/16, then a further 11% increase for 2016-17 to £210,000-£215,000, more than double the salaries of the two next highest paid staff on £80,000-£90,000. Just one other staff member earned as much as £60,000-£70,000. The school Teachers Review Body has recommended a maximum pay increase of 2% for some teachers and 1% for all others. One can only imagine how good this is for staff morale.
In December 2017, the Chief Executive of the Education Skills and Funding Agency wrote to Chairs of stand alone Academy Trusts where accounts showed an annual salary of more than £150,000 was being paid, such as Knole. She asked for the rationale behind the decision and the due process followed. It would be interesting to see the Knole Academy response.
Performance
For Progress 8 at GCSE in 2017, now regarded as the preferred measure of performance by government, Knole Academy came 26th out of 65 non-selective Kent schools. In Attainment it came 21st, but by both measures it came below all of the other five urban non-selective West Kent academies (excluding High Weald in Cranbrook, with a very different type of catchment area). In terms of size, there are fourteen Kent non-selective schools larger.
Ofsted
The OFSTED Report of September 2017 (after 2016-17 salary had been set) raised the Grading of the school to ‘Good’. It is fulsome in its praise of senior leaders, but unusually makes little mention of the Principal, although it opens with the bald sentence ‘The Principal is ambitious’.
Teacher’s Salaries are decided by the Staffing Committee of the Academy Governing Body, who in the case of Knole clearly have no idea what criteria should be applied. Simply looking around West Kent, so that cost of living is removed as a factor, every other academy is performing better than Knole. At the time of the most recent salary award, Knole Academy was classified as ‘Requires Improvement’, three of the others are ‘Outstanding’, and the two others ‘Good’. The great majority of other self-standing academies award an annual salary of £110,000 or less. The only two exceptions, apart from Skinners Kent Academy that I can find are Kent’s two all-through 4-19 schools, being Folkestone and John Wallis in Ashford, both in areas of considerable social deprivation.
Leigh Academy Trust
Unusually, the highest paid employee, the CEO of the Trust, does not appear the highest remunerated according to the Company Accounts, although he had a salary increase of £15,000 to £180,000 an increase of 9%. The Principals of Leigh Academy (now a moderately performing school at GCSE) and Wilmington Academy, both staff Directors of the Trust, had a total remuneration of £200,000 each in 2016-17, up from £180,000 in 2015-16, according to the accounts although, as employees their salaries appear as £130,000-£140,000, and 'Staff Directors only receive remuneration in respect of services they provide undertaking the roles of staff and not in respect of their services as Directors'. I will be happy to expand this further on receipt of additional information. Leigh Academy Trust was responsible for seven secondary schools, seven primary schools and a Special school in 2016-17.
All these three leaders are seeing rises way above the expectations of any of the teachers who work for them, the next two highest paid staff members are on salaries of £100,000 to 110,000 probably Principals of two of the other secondary academies.
Swale Academy Trust,
Is responsible for four secondary and six primary schools in 2016-17 and hit the national news last year, the CEO having a salary increase of £20,000 annually to £190,000 for 2016-17, although half of this was a pension adjustment. A second employee, unnamed, has also been on a salary of £190,000, probably the Executive Head Secondary. I can't see reference in the accounts to 'the four BMWs provided for the CEO and three other top Trust Executives to carry out their duties' as described in the article. There are just two more employees at over £100,000 and less than £120,000, one of whom is the likely to be the Executive Head, Primary.Three more staff earn more than £80,000 presumably accounting for all the secondary headteachers.
Oasis Community Learning
In contrast look at Oasis Community Learning, one of the largest Academy Trusts in the country, with 50 secondary and primary academies, including Oasis Isle of Sheppey Academy the second largest school in Kent, although one of the worst by many criteria. This group had just one employee, presumably the CEO, at a salary of £200,000 in 2016-17, then three at £120,000, eight at £110,000 and six at £100,000. Many of the top performers, although not all, will be the heads of secondary academies, so little evidence of salary inflation here.
Government Action
According to the online site Schools Week, the government Academies Minister 'has written to chairs of academy trust boards urging them to take their financial responsibilities seriously, and not to over-reward trust bosses. In particular he said the salaries of non-teaching senior leaders should not rise at a faster rate than for classroom staff'. He also warned that the 'chief executive at the Education Skills and Funding Agency would soon be writing to multi-academy trusts if an employee was earning more than £150,000'. Conclusion
It is partially a matter of opinion as to what a headteacher should be paid, but ability, performance, size and challenge of the task and market forces are clearly relevant factors. Whatever the figure settled on, it is surely wrong to see leaders receiving double digit percentage pay rises whilst the teaching profession as a whole sees its pay pegged down, high numbers of teachers leaving because of workload, stress and poor conditions of service, recruitment becoming increasingly difficult, and the state education being in financial crisis.
Stories of 'Fat Cats' in schools tend to apply to those at very top of Academy Chains, Knole Academy being an exception, with limited evidence that those further down the line are financially better off than headteachers outside.
Governing Body Committees fixing salaries may argue that recruitment and retention of good leaders is critical to the success of a school, which it is, but some of the examples of bad practice given above will simply attract the high levels of criticism already levelled at the current scandal of Vice Chancellors’ pay, and bring the whole pay structure into disrepute.
I was criticised after my previous article, on the grounds that I was encouraging new high targets for Headteachers to achieve, and certainly looking at some of the numbers above, it is easy to form an opinion that these are the norm. However, the reality is that the large majority of secondary headteachers are paid no more than £100,000, down as far as £70,000. What is evident however, is that some inexperienced or incompetent Governing Bodies are being bamboozled into paying ridiculous salaries, without thought of the impact these will have on the rest of their school staff, the school finances or the public perception of schools with money to burn, at a time of real financial crisis in schools. I hope that this article will encourage a sense of reality.
Certainly, Governors at The Knole Academy, surely the worst offender by some way, have real culpability for their failures exposed here, and have shown themselves unfit for the purpose of governing the school.
