The chief executive of the City and Guilds Group received more than £690,000 in pay, bonuses and benefits in one year, Tes can reveal.
Chris Jones received pay and benefits worth a total of £690,471 in 2016 - up by 60 per cent on the £431,783 emoluments he received in 2015, according to the group’s financial statements for 2015-16.
In 2016, Mr Jones received a salary of £259,500, taxable benefits worth £46,375 (including car allowance and “cash in lieu of pension”) and a cash bonus of £107,367. He also received a lump sum of £277,229 under a long-term incentive plan. This, according to the document, covers the “three years ended August 2016 and amounts to 36 per cent of salary per year of the [payment] plan”.
Mr Jones’ package was almost double the salary of the best-paid college principal, according to the most recent official figures. In 2014-15, Sunaina Mann, then principal and chief executive of the North East Surrey College of Technology (Nescot) Group, was paid £363,000. She left the role in June 2016. According to the 2015-16 annual accounts, the best-paid academies leader was Sir Daniel Moynihan, CEO of the Harris Federation of schools. He was paid between £420,000 and £425,000.
In December, the unions representing college staff agreed a 1 per cent pay rise with the Association of Colleges.
‘Impact on FE budgets’
The City and Guilds Group - a registered charity - comprises vocational awarding body City and Guilds, as well as sister companies ILM, Kineo, The Oxford Group, Digitalme and e3Learning.
Janet Clark, the ATL teaching union’s education policy adviser, said: “ATL is concerned about the impact [high salaries at awarding bodies] will have on FE budgets, which are already stretched.
“Adult education budgets have already been cut by around 35 per cent over the last six years. To have this amount of money going from colleges to an awarding organisation is going to have a big impact.”
Mr Jones joined the group in 2008, having previous held roles at LexisNexis, Pearson and Reed Elsevier. According to the company’s website: “Since joining in 2008, he has led the City and Guilds Group through a period of significant growth, which has enabled further investment in the organisation.”
‘We need to attract good senior executives’
A City and Guilds Group spokesperson said Mr Jones’ base salary was unchanged since January 2015, and that the £277,000 payment under the long-term incentive plan was “a core part of our executive reward package”.
The spokesperson added: “Fifty-six per cent of his total reward was based on the successful delivery of performance-related targets, as set by the trustees of the City amd Guilds Group. This year’s long-term improvement plan (LTIP) has paid out because the three-year growth targets were met. It has been incrementally accounted for over the past three years but only paid out in August 2016. The last LTIP did not pay out as targets were not met.
“The trustees believe that we need to be able to attract and retain senior executives with the right levels of experience and the right capabilities to enable the group’s future growth. Chris Jones is responsible for running a set of successful businesses across over 100 international markets. Over the past few years, our strategy has focused on diversifying away from publicly funded markets, and approximately a third of our revenue now comes from non-publicly funded markets, such as elearning and corporate training delivery.
“The governance of executive reward sits with the remuneration committee. This committee consists of trustees, with input from external specialist advisers. The committee is accountable directly to the full trustee board. It works to a set of best-practice principles to determine and approve executive remuneration, including annual bonuses and long-term incentive plans.”
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