Head who said she cleaned the toilets earns between £120-130,000 a year. The school has £1,285,000 in unrestricted reserves.

[BubblesBuddy]

Why is she cleaning the toilets and vacuuming the school when it has substantial reserves and she earns a good whack? Senior Deputy earns £80-90,000. They appear to have money and their accountants say the school is fiscally sound. Why did she say she had to clean the school to save money? It appears to be untrue and there is money to pay for an additional cleaner! A few £ off her salary would cover it!

BubblesBuddy - do you actually know anything about how state school financing works, or are you just looking at an out of date snapshot of a set of accounts you don't fully understand?

Bubbles, I can assure you that the school is not full of wealthy families. The recent refurbishment is largely down to the school selling off a huge part of its playing fields to a developer

It is a true concept that schools that are able to raise money from parents Have More Money than those who cannot. As a school governor I do understand school finance and, no, I do not expect it to replace funding! I did not say that. However it is true that there is money that can be spent on school items. My local secondary school asks for parental contributions for all sorts of things. They are, therefore, better off than the schools with no parental contributions. It’s fact. I don’t remotely agree with it but it’s not new where I live. I know a school that consistently raised over £100,000 p/a from parents 30 years ago!

Lucky the school that has the land to sell off. I have no doubt that was worth millions of £. Schools near me sold off playing future 30 years ago! When you have a new building, you have to factor in upkeep of it! That’s what budget planning is all about. I don’t think did one minute the school factored in the Head doing it. This school plainly has enough money to afford a few cleaners on the minimum wage. The Head was grandstanding and it takes away from the real need experienced by other schools.

I think some people are missing Bubbles point.

I live close enough to know this school and it is not a struggling school and it is not in a deprived area. As Bubbles has evidenced it is paying the senior members of staff way over the normal pay rates and by doing so claims to be unable to afford a cleaner. So why use this school as an example as an underfunded school ? If I was in charge of school funding I wouldn't give Tolworth Girls anymore money because as an academy I couldn't direct where the money is spent and on current form it would probably be used to increase senior staff pay.

I hope most of us are aware that there are deprived areas in the UK where schools are genuinely struggling, particularly schools with a large percentage of SEN children. And these are schools in economically deprived areas without the benefit any PTA funds. Focusing on schools like Tolworth distracts from schools with real funding issues.

I am growing increasingly convinced that articles in The Times/ TES are planted by the government to distract from the real problems in education.

BubblesBuddy - in all honesty, I think you are the one playing into the DfE's hands by claiming that some schools are too well off to complain about funding. And it's ludicrous to argue that a school is lucky to have to sell off land because most schools already did that years ago.

And so far as The Times readers are concerned, I suspect tales of woe from deprived areas of the country will merely have them sighing with relief that they don't have to send their children to those schools.

And unsurprisingly the DM has picked up on this story now.

What amazes me is that the HT pay has increased from £95k to £125k between 2012-18 in a period when pupil numbers have actually fallen! Academies seem to be all about paying those at the top more.

And as a Times reader myself yes I do care about underfunded schools in deprived areas. How about showcasing one of these?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6841239/GUY-ADAMS-reveals-head-teacher-cleaned-loos-marks-scaremongering.html

I know the school and heard the interview. It didn't stack. Unorofessional to take personal politics to school.

Ah, The Daily Mail - low on understanding of school funding, high on vituperative bollocks. Not that I object to digs at academies, mind you.

Is 120k a big salary of someone who runs a fairly large organisation with an overall budget of around £10 imo, maybe 150 staff and being responsible for the education and safeguarding of maybe 1,000 pupils?

I think if you compared it to the private sector or NHS managers (the true scandal), it would seem quite mean.

And yes, deprived schools should be showcased, but one needs to push itself forward for scrutiny - and expect the same politically biased judgements about poor financial decisions, general money wasting, poor leadership, lack of discipline, etc.

But a HT shouldn't be running a large organisation they should be running a school. The two require very different skill sets and this is where academies fail. If the Tolworth HT applied for a job running a similar size for profit organisation she wouldn't get the job, she is a teacher not a business woman. This is obvious from the huge amount of money wasted building an enlarged 6th form is an area with a huge surplus of 6th form places including one of the best 6th form colleges in the country.

Academies seem to be able to spend what they want, where they want.

'But a HT shouldn't be running a large organisation they should be running a school. The two require very different skill sets and this is where academies fail.'

I actually disagree with that. Many Head Teachers do fail because they have only one skill set. However a school is both 'a school' and a 'business' with cashflow to be managed and investments to be made.

If you leave the business side to the bursar or 'business manager' they have no idea where to lead the school, as they are not teachers so you, at best, get a status quo and, at worst, a school whose vision is business and not education led.

A talented head (and look at the best) is a leader, a teacher and a business manager. Of course, the best (like the best leaders in any industry) are able to competently delegate. The fact that there are some awful heads is no reason not to pay what the job is worth if properly done.

I completely disagree. The purpose of a business is to make a profit, most limited companies are set up with the aim of maximising shareholder wealth. The skills for running a school are not business skills, they are management skills within a not for profit environment.

Can you imagine this HT presenting a business plan to Alan Sugar to build an expanded 6th form for a very average school surrounded by schools with better A level results, in an area where there is already an excess of 6th form places?

A level results in the area:

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/schools-by-type?step=default&table=schools&region=314&la-name=kingston-upon-thames&la-name=kingston-upon-thames&geographic=la&for=16to18&orderby=ks5.0.TALLPPE_ALEV_1618&orderdir=asc

Cake,

It is not a one to one mapping but there are many areas of commonality.

Schools are paid per pupil. They have a semi fixed cost of the SLT and a basic number of teachers. Beyond that they have to sell a vision to both good teachers and parents that they can both embrace, they have to manage costs and ideally reinvest in the business.

Meanwhile they have to please their stakeholders: parents, pupils, teachers, support staff and the board of governors.

And they have to make sure everyone is safe and obeying the law.

Strikes me as pretty similar skills to a CEO.

One could take the woman more seriously if she ran a better performing school. Tolworth is regarded as rather rough.

Oh, ffs. This is exactly why schools in severe financial need are not shoving themselves forward to be scrutinised by journalists who know fuck all about the running of a school and school finance. If an Ofsted outstanding rated school which has attempted to improve facilities through selling off land, fundraising and seeking grants can be simultaneously accused of being too rough and too posh, too rich and too badly run, then why the hell would a school with no money for anything and thus low standards in everything, bother to lay itself bare for lazy journalists who are not interested in facts and detailed research into school funding, only political spin? What's the point?

larrygrylls

I understand the point you are trying to make but it doesn't make sense because the customers are forced to make this purchase.

School are selling something that has to be bought. For most families there is only one viable school choice, their catchment school. Education is not a free market. I am sure that many families in the Tolworth catchment looking for single sex schools would far rather send their girls to Holy Cross a bit further up the road, or Ursuline with better results but it is not an option unless they are RC. Similarly, many would probably prefer Hinchley Wood or Hollyfield, over subscribed local co-eds but they again are not an option simply down to te appicants postcide.

The success or failure of any company is driven by sales. Yes we have to buy electricity from somewhere, easy to sell. No we don't have to but electric hair straighteners - much harder to sell.

In a competitve environment a company must sell to survive. Competitive companies do not have a guaranteed number of customers turning up every year forced to buy their product despite probably wanting to buy something else. Tolworth does not have a great reputation and a lot of people would rather send their DCs elsewhere but the numbers will remain high because the customers have no choice, they don't even have the choice to not buy.

I have met many HTs and they are managers. They do not have CEO qualities and nor should they have, they are running a school.

God all this talk of schools as businesses that parents are forced to buy from and pupils as customers is bloody depressing.