To think executives earning £500,000 in a failing state secondary school system is utterly shameful?

[SharpOpalNewt]

How is this anything other than an absolute disgrace? This is public money and where all your taxes are going, while state secondary schools are an absolute shambles. The whole academy and free school system set up by Michael Gove is an absolute joke. They are royally taking the piss out of hard-working tax payers, parents, and the pupils who attend, many of whom are being completely failed by the current system.

England’s best-paid academy trust boss has been handed a £25,000 pay hike – taking his salary to over half a million pounds.

Harris Federation CEO Sir Dan Moynihan has become the first academy trust chief executive to cross the £500,000 threshold, latest accounts show.

He took home between £515,000 and £520,000 in 2023-24, up from a range of £485,000 to £490,000 the previous reporting year. This represents an increase of just over 5 per cent.

It is Moynihan’s second pay rise in a row. In 2022-23, his wages rose from between £455,000 to £460,000 to at least £485,000. This represented his first uplift in pay since 2018-19.

The trust – which has frequently been at the centre of controversy for its executive pay figures – has six other unnamed members of staff earning more than £190,000.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/moynihan-becomes-first-500k-academy-ceo/

I thought schools were seriously strapped for cash and did not even have enough money to employ specialist subject teachers or rebuild dodgy crumbling concrete classrooms? Let alone the textbooks, materials and school trips which were all routinely provided at one time.

As a comparison, the head of Eton earns less. I imagine Harris academies are not particularly like Eton.

LEAs weren't great

Sure, but why do we need a layer of management above individual headteachers or a chain of schools at all?

In Scotland this upper layer of management is done by the local authority. The director of education in my area is on a salary of £125k. Below that there are two heads of education who each earn £100k. We have 8 high schools, 30 primary schools and one additional support for learning high school. So a combined salary equivalent to £325k, for looking after fewer schools and with far less accountability.

These roles are necessary, you can argue about salary but what do you think is the right amount for the job? The taxpayers pay for the role whether it is private or Local Authority.

But you said: "I have no objection to those running large charities earning a good salary"

I agree op, £500k is a huge salary and I don't really see how it is warranted. I think the government needs to look at exec pay in Trusts and issue some guidelines.

However, in my experience Trusts are hugely beneficial to the educational landscape. They are the chief drivers of school improvement and provide schools with a level of support that LAs are not able to provide. I could give you many many examples of Trusts that are huge drivers of improvement for schools, and for children with SEN. They are no bad thing.

The poster I was replying to was referring to charities like Cancer Research and was not talking about schools.

I disagree with the entire academy chain model and their practices.

Grant me the intelligence to not treat this as a "gotcha" point.

@SharpOpalNewt I was a governor in state maintained school and in a Trust, much more oversight from the leaders in the Trust than there was from LEA

I disagree with the entire academy chain model and their practices.

So you;d be against them no matter what this person's salary was?

But you weren't aware that academies ARE charities

You are being disingenuous, you are opposed to MATs, irrelevant of the salary of the CEOs. So their salary is irrelevant, if they worked for free you would still oppose academies

cstuk.org.uk/knowledge/guidance-and-policy/from-good-to-great-the-positive-impact-of-school-trusts-in-education/

The above documents sets out the positive impact that trusts have had on schools and children.

I made the mistake of granting you the intelligence that you were not making a facetious and disingenuous gotcha point which I have already addressed, but it seems you will persist in digging yourself into a hole. I don't see any point in engaging with you further on this thread.

No, the fact is this thread is a MAT bashing thread. It fundamentally has nothing to do with the salary of CEOs.

Too right it's an academy school bashing thread. It's an entire secondary education system bashing thread. You don't agree, you think I'm being unreasonable, you've had your say and that's fine.

I agree. There is no need for layer on layer of management. Schools are not businesses. They can be managed individually by the Head and their on-site team.

The early sponsor academies (introduced under the Labour govt) showed considerable improvement after they were removed from LA control (see Machin and Silva).

Those early sponsors included Trusts like Harris who still see high results AND educate a disproportionate number of disadvantaged children in some of the most challenging areas of the country.

System leaders like Sir Dan Moynihan also contribute to wider system improvement, by sharing best practice, helping to shape govt policy, providing food banks etc.

I would choose a Harris or Ark school over an LA run school (possibly with the exception of Camden or Newham) any day of the week.

I agree op that the entire secondary school system needs to be radically rethought. However this is not a MAT specific issue.

But with MATs you can get economies of scale, sharing of best practice, sharing of resources etc. School improvement lead in a MAT can work across many schools.

Small rural schools benefit from Trusts as they can share more resources rather than close.

My work runs alongside the LEA for my local area. Our best performing secondary school - by a country mile - is the only LA-maintained secondary school in the county. Year on year, without exception.

Conversely, our lowest performing schools are part of large education trusts with expensive CEOs at the top.

Anecdote =/= data and all that, but it does give pause for thought.

@NotSayingImBatman what level of need is there in the state maintained school compared to the schools in the Trusts?

Experience would show that this is absolutely not the case. I don't love the academy model but far, far too many children were being failed by the "treat every school as an island" model we used to use.

The average Headteacher does not earn anywhere near £90k.
Why should there be a layer above HTs? Because some don't do their job properly. Like in any job.

Same here but to be fair these were all schools that were failing for years when run by the lea. It was the worst schools that were forced to join academy chains, the la got to keep the better ones.

@Porcuporpoise that’s a very good point failing schools were forced to academise. Think that might change going forward.

Some of the local Trust schools here have CAIRBs (Communication and interaction resource bases) or other special provisions for children with SEND. Not aware of any local state maintained schools having these

Of course a document produced by the organisation that represents academies would paint a positive picture. However, they're somewhat cherry picking their evidence. Some of the studies cited are nowhere near as positive, like this one

www.suttontrust.com/news-opinion/all-news-opinion/two-thirds-of-academy-chains-perform-below-average-for-disadvantaged-pupils/

I should have added that the Sutton report does point out the Harris trust performs very well.

Completely agree this was all created under Gove as a way of making money. This system is very english specific. This doesn't exist in Northern Ireland or Ireland. Where is the Department of Education in the running of schools ?