Yesterday, the BBC ran a story about graduates and repayment of their tuition fees. Of the three graduates featured: one had paid nothing of the loan off, and her interest payments were increasing; one had paid something, and one had repaid the lot, using a family loan at a lower rate of interest. Plan 2: Three friends on a decade of student loans – BBC News
What stuck me about these three graduates in their 30,s was how much they were earning. One, in private practice, earned £50K; another as a project manager working outside London earned £72K and the third in financial services earned £85K.
Now, all no doubt have responsibilities, but do they have the same level of responsibilities as a primary headteacher, even of the smallest school?
Since last summer, I have seen 36 headships advertised on a scale starting at below £60,000 and more than 270 in total with a scale starting below £70,000. Now there are pension benefits and employer-driven flexitime holidays that the graduate in private practice might not expect, but there is a freedom that self-employment brings, plus other advantages.
Of course, the bottom of the scale might not be where a headteacher start, but it does provide a guideline. Indeed, with falling rolls, I have seen some re-advertisements at a lower salary than the original advert.
In post earlier this year, I wondered whether about primary headteacher salaries Are state school headteachers overpaid? | John Howson and I make no excuse for returning to the subject. It’s a tough job running some our smallest schools. Little by way of support staff; mixed age classes, the same amount of DfE demands, from the annual census to attendance returns, let alone Ofsted looming.
I don’t know whether the NAHT still submit job evaluation data comparing headteachers with comparable salaries elsewhere to the School Teachers Pay Review body, and I hope that they still do, because it seems to me that secondary headteachers manging a leadership team are often rewarded with a six figure salary, primary heads managing themselves, and both teaching and providing leadership aren’t properly recompensed. And what happens when a grumpy parent uses AI to submit a 22 page complaint, and expects a response?
Hopefully, if the school is in an academy trust or a diocese, help will be forthcoming, but for maintained schools, it will depend upon how many staff are left supporting education in Children’s Services. Not many, in some authorities, I fear.
As I pointed out in the previous post, a teacher in a large primary school on the upper Pay spine and with a TLR (Teaching & Learning Responsibility point) might earn nearly as much a headteacher in a small school, and with the benefit of the 1265 hours worktime directive that doesn’t apply to those on the Leadership Scale, such as headteachers.
I sincerely hope that the School Teachers Pay Review body will consider the issue of the demands of being a headteacher, and the remuneration it deserves. If it doesn’t, I suspect many primary headteachers would make excellent project managers, and not have to work evening and weekends. And, of course they wouldn’t have to deal with staff, parents and pupils.
A headteacher role is a great job, but it needs rewarding appropriately, and not just a sum based upon pupil numbers alone.
