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

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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.

Comparison of my local private school to my local MAT shows something interesting. There are well paid individuals running both.

BUT compare the numbers of Teachers Vs Management and admin... The private school staff is 66% teachers. In the MAT, teachers make up only 35% of the staff.

People trying to justify this ridiculous salary need to stop, it is widely acknowledged in the education sector as way too high.

It led to Lord Adonis admitting that it was a mistake when setting up the academy model not to put a cap on CEO pay. The Tories told Moynihan several times to stop awarding himself such outrageous pay increases when they were in power.

He doesn’t give a shit, he’ll take as much as he can, and it’s coming out of school budgets.

I’m not sure any other MAT CEO salary comes even close to his.

Haven't seen anyone justifying this high a salary, just some pointing out you need to pay a salary commensurate with the skill level of managing such huge budgets etc.

@FiveFoxes how big is that Trust, trying to work out how a school can run with such a low teacher base compared to central team?

SEND sits around the national average in the state maintained school, but with a slightly higher than average number of EHCPs.

Slightly above the national average for SEND in the lowest performing school with an average number of EHCPs.

The state maintained school has slightly lower than average numbers of children in receipt of free school meals, whilst the lowest performing school has a higher figure. However, there are other schools run as academies outside of a trust with huge numbers of children in receipt of FSM where performance is improving.

I’m not saying all academies are terrible and all state maintained schools are fantastic, but I haven’t seen any evidence in my professional life that large, executive academy trusts improve performance or outcomes for struggling children.

Hi there, Amanda Pritchard is the CEO for NHS England, not just one of the Trusts. She replaced Lord Stevens. I think her total package (pension etc) is 330k

There are only 5 Trust (eg Kings College) CEOs that are paid around 300k

Quick Google...
The biggest MAT, United Learning Trust, cEO salary £252 000.

That is radically different.

They are a business, they have HR departments, Procurement, Recruitment, Estates and Facilities teams, IT departments etc...Someone has to head up the commercial side of the business but yes, it's a lot of money.

What makes you say that? I'd say the one thing that is certain about school acadmies in the state sector is that there is nor clear evidence whether they are are idea or now . No consistent data on improved outcomes across all academies . Some might perform well but others are dire. Little accountability.

Improving schools’ performance: Are multi-academy trusts the answer?House of Lords Library article: Quotes from this link are below - hardly a ringing endorsement and certainly not worth paying salaries of half a million to the person running one!!

Data on Ofsted ratings does not show that schools in MATs have better ratings than other types of school, according to information published in the same paper. However, the government emphasised that many schools joined MATs because they were underperforming; therefore they started from a lower base. The government highlighted that “more than seven out of 10 sponsored academies were now rated good or outstanding compared to about one in 10 of the local authority-maintained schools they replaced”.

On academic results the picture is mixed, according to figures in the same government paper. The percentage of pupils achieving the expected standard in reading, writing and maths was, on the whole, slightly higher in maintained schools than in MATs. For example, the median proportion of students reaching the expected standard was 67% for maintained schools and 65% for MATs. However, MATs had a greater variation in performance. The higher performing MATs performed better than the better performing maintained schools, and the lower performing MATs performed worse than the worst-performing maintained schools.

Other research also shows a mixed picture on results. Research published by the Education Policy Institute in 2017 concluded that while MATs accounted for many of the highest performing school groups at primary and secondary level, MATs were also over-represented among the lowest performing school groups.

Research by education charity the Sutton Trust found that MATs also produced mixed results for disadvantaged pupils. It found that in 2017 disadvantaged pupils in 12 out of 58 academy chains had attainment above the national average for disadvantaged pupils (excluding those in special schools or other specialist settings), including three chains that were substantially above that average. However, 38 of the 58 had attainment below the mainstream average, including eight that were “well below average”.

The government has said this variation in performance is the reason it emphasises that schools would join a “strong” trust. In the white paper, the government acknowledged that “on average, the poorest performing MATs do worse than the poorest performing LAs [local authorities]”. To counteract this, it said it would “take a single regulatory approach to academy trusts and provide parents with assurance about the expectations against which trusts are held to account”.

In response to the 2022 white paper, several other organisations released research arguing against the effectiveness of academies. The National Education Union (NEU) said its analysis suggested that schools that joined MATs were less likely to improve and more likely to fall back than those that did not. It found that primary schools that were not academies were more likely to retain an “outstanding” grade from Ofsted in inspections than other types of schools. According to the research, 30% of “outstanding” primary schools under the local authority kept their “outstanding” status, compared with 7% of primary schools in MATs. However, there was no difference between local authority secondary schools and secondary schools that had joined a MAT keeping their “outstanding” rating: it was just over half for both LA schools and MAT schools that had been a local authority school.

Yes that made fun reading especially as it says compare to director of children’s services who arguably have greater responsibilities! It’s government money and needs more oversight from the DfE as to what salaries are being paid either with bandings being issued or written into funding agreements.

The problem is having to have a CEO/accounting officer of a Trust means you are looking at someone who will expect a commensurate salary. As salaries need to be benchmarked I wonder what they were benchmarking his against! I guess the issue then starts as more CEOs will expect higher salaries and benchmarking becomes problematic. The more Trusts the more CEOs.

Also should size of Trust be measured on number of schools, number of staff, number of pupils. Trusts in rural areas will likely have more schools, especially if Primary based but a smaller number of pupils. Is it easier to manage a smaller number of larger schools, or a larger number of smaller schools?

Smaller Trusts probably have a much more hands on CEO who will visit schools, be seen by staff, parents etc. Larger Trusts these people have probably never met the CEO.

To be fair the whole education system needs an overhaul. Not sure what new Government are planning is going to help.

If Trusts were to be disbanded though it would cost a fortune and that money would go to accountants and lawyers, not the children.

Disadvantaged children are being failed everywhere

And that's the nub of it all. We need cross party agreement on the future + funding of education. We won't get it so we just keep bumping along the bottom with a system that keeps letting all children down.

Inevitable really with the neoliberal policies that privatised our previously public services. Same can be said for train company bosses, water company bosses etc. Harris have been successful in the free market of education which means they can open more schools and pay their executive leaders more and more whilst de-skilling, exploiting and underpaying their teachers. I personally would do away with academies and bring schools back under local control. At least then there was some democratic accountability.

I dont teach but I used to work for a large MAT.

There were some positives, having central services like payroll and HR meant you didn’t need those staff in each school. We shared staff, if there was an issue or staff absence often colleagues could from another school.

However the way they tried to standardise everything became ridiculous. Each school even in the same towns are different, each having the same staffing regardless of behavioural issues. I had a great Head who quit as she begged for more staff but was knocked back as she had the requisite number. Trying to serve the same menus. There’s also definitely a point where the trust had too many schools and they lost a lot of control.
There was also a lot of crap teachers who manoeuvred their way into good positions. Support staff were all treated like they were replaceable and frankly very badly compared to teachers. Unqualified and inexperienced staff would be employed to run departments like behaviour and would crash and burn. They’d just get new people in.

It was a trust who also believed in strict discipline. Frankly though by secondary it’s often too late and there is zero consistency from primary where bad behaviour is managed with positivity etc they come to secondary thinking they can do what they like. I think small trusts, like where my daughter goes, and there are links between primary/secondary can be positive.

YANBU
The extra layer of ‘management’ is jobs for the boys. The money these CEO’s are paid should be spent on actual teachers and resources. At his level he is absolutely not managing 55 schools. He is a figurehead with no interest in individual pupils or staff.

You may not agree with the role existing, but that is not a reason for saying that the salary is too high for the role itself. Those are separate points.

@caramac04 I'm guessing the same would be said for the higher level staff in LEA (although not on such a high salary)

And if people think LEA etc is better than Trusts, our local Children's Services is in Special Measures so all local children are pretty much fucked especially those with needs

@twistyizzy This post covers it- the idea that this 'talent' is worth say over ten extra teachers or twenty or more TAs and the difference they'd make is nonsense. Their pay needs to be proportionate.

(although not on such a high salary)

That is the OPs point though- so do you agree it's an unreasonable salary?

YANBU.

@caramac04 I would be interested to know how he and the Trustees justify that level.

But if we have Trusts they need CEOs, and there are more Trusts than there were LEAs. However, I am noticing in our area Trusts, if not merging, are beginning to share leaders across Trusts so sharing the burden of salaries and sharing knowledge.

Looking at one of the local Trusts, income wise a 10th of the size of Harris Trust, CEO earns a quarter of what Harris CEO earns. Local CEO salary is standard for sector in this area, but lower than CEO in similar size business but different sector

Fair enough. It's not been our experience of them but we were lucky I guess