Private school headteacher salaries - pure greed?

[Gruffalowings]

The Times reports that the Head of Eton is getting a 41.5% pay increase to £370 000.

Why?

The Head of the Civil Service only gets £200 000.

I don’t know how many private school headteachers are on more than the prime minister (£167 000), but it’s quite a few these days; at the same time as fees going up, pensions being removed and teachers experiencing below-inflation pay awards.

For all the anger around VAT on fees, I don’t see parents begrudging headteachers these extraordinary salaries.

AIBU to think that what private school headteachers are paid speaks to nothing more than pure greed in these individuals?

The problem won't become apparent immediately. 🙄 I think this is what everyone is missing. The wheels are falling off but haven't fallen off yet so it still looks fine from the outside. So people are still chucking money at it. When a school goes downhill, it's never immediately obvious, that's why parents need to know what's going on behind the scenes. Most genuine parents of children at fee-paying schools, IME, are sympathetic to the issues when they find out, and they are horrified.

OP, I suspect all the "who cares?" and "whatabouts" on this thread are the ones who just love bashing anything and anyone who mentions private/public schools, as literally any thread about private schools brings them out in droves on MN lately and it's like there's a competition of who can be the most dismissive or shitty about private schools as a concept, regardless of the actual topic of conversation. 🥱 It didn't used to be like that.

I absolutely agree with this. Pure greed.

And the lack of accountability for MAT heads should have been solved by now.

They do not make profit. They do not have shareholders. They have charitable status. They have relief from business rates - sometimes 100%.

And a lot of them seem to be subsidised by giving real terms and also, actual, pay cuts to their staff (so if they are businesses, their business model isn’t working).

I think the Harris head of MAT deserves the salary! State education in this country is stressful and they are constantly walking a political tightrope.

His methods are controversial @Araminta1003 - off-rolling, high staff turnovers and questionable takeovers.

But the lack of accountability around MAT heads shouldn’t still be an issue.

Hundreds of thousands of people get paid more than the prime minister. Wizard earns more annually from I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day than the prime minister earns from being prime minister. A Man U footballer earns that in a week. When you send your kid to private school you’re paying for the best head teacher the school can afford. At Eton that’s only the annual fee from 10 boys. A drop in the ocean for a school like that.

I suppose it depends how much they are eating.

The funding of state schools is so different now that almost all of them are in MATs with layers of heads/executives/chief executives. All being paid rather well. And yet the schools themselves have no money for anything - equipment, teachers, TA's, SEN, support staff etc.
Why is no-one questioning this? State schools are in the worst state they've ever been (we keep being told) and yet all this money, tax payer money, is being spent on the salaries of these people? Am I wrong?

I teach in a boarding school. With a virtual decade long pay freeze, I've gone from earning well to having an average salary that's about 10K lower than it would be if I was teaching in the state sector. If my headteacher was earning that kind of money and getting raises, I'd be seriously pissed off. But he isn't. Because we aren't Eton. I imagine their teachers are much better paid than I am too.

What other schools or sectors do is irrelevant. The schools can pay what they want and can afford.

It is a bit depressing considering what the heads of state schools get, I agree.

You are making an assumption that the pay freeze you are experiencing isn’t happening at schools like Eton … it is starting to, actually.

This model of well-paid headteachers vs poorly paid teachers, support stafff and contract workers is the result of benchmarking exercises across the sector.

And the approach to pensions is drifting over to the state sector.

“And the approach to pensions is drifting over to the state sector.“

This is a difficult question though for young teachers who cannot get on the housing ladder and would prefer a larger salary now rather than a big pension years down the line when they may only realistically be in teaching for 15 years. There is a real conflict here between the needs of younger staff vs the oldies who want their pension scheme to continue.
It is not as simple as evil private schools paved the way.

The head of the Harris Federation gets £455k. (Admittedly covering a number of schools, but still only one bloke with one job.)

@Supermand "
"The head of the Harris Federation gets £455k. (Admittedly covering a number of schools, but still only one bloke with one job.)"

True. There are over 3000 heads who aren't heads of trusts, though.

True about flexibility, but offering alternative schemes has led to both a loss of pension and poor pay in the independent sector (but not for the heads who are implementing the changes in our Ts and Cs).

It’s a false dichotomy to pit young teachers against old. Teacher pay in both sectors should have risen in line with other professions, and it hasn’t. Our status and pay as a profession is being eroded, and both inexperienced and experienced teachers need to challenge this for ourselves and for the good of our future students.

Sure, and most private heads don’t earn anything like what the head of Eton gets.

Lots of things to object to about private education but I’m struggling to see this as one of them. There are high earnings heads in private and public sector 🤷‍♀️ Most heads earn a fair salary for a difficult job in both sectors.

Well, it’s 60:40 Yabu at the moment, so you are in good company.

Those working in independent schools on increasingly poor deals may see things differently.

I was interested in the Hampton School perspective - it’s not a school that I know.

The idea that people think these headteachers are doing a good job is also very interesting - leadership in the independent sector doesn’t seem to be well-stocked with talent at the moment. There’s a great deal of inexperience, churn and failures in succession planning, actually.