Headteachers, like university vice-chancellors, have a duty to provide a moral lead, to their students, their staff and to the public. They are not islands standing alone, still less entrepreneurs, bankers or footballers. Their business is education, an ethical activity to its very core. Excessive pay damages morale, heighten a “them and us” divide running throughout their organisations and creates a poor impression nationally.

Headships are extremely difficult jobs to do well. For all those who are eager to tell us that they “love their job” there are many who find it, like I did, often lonely, frustrating and anxious. Few people will tell a head they are doing a good job or offer you empathetic understanding. You pour every drop of yourself into a speech or initiative, and no one says a word of praise or thanks. Problems regularly hit you from out of a blue sky over which you have absolutely no control. The buck undeniably stops at your desk. 

Heads should be paid considerably more than their teaching staff, and well above the levels of their senior leadership team.

That does not mean though that we have to pay heads excessively high salaries. The best heads, without exception, regard it as a privilege and an honour to be serving their schools as leaders. Cash is a secondary motivation. The problem with paying very high rates, as some are, is that people will want to be heads for the wrong reasons. What we should be doing throughout our school system is encouraging those with the motivation and the talent to be a head to develop their skills and aptitudes far earlier in their careers. This will broaden considerably the pool of available talent.

Vast and complex job

Should vice-chancellors be paid considerably more than heads, as they are? I think so. Not until I became a vice-chancellor, albeit of a small university, have I come to appreciate fully quite how vast and complex the job of running a university is compared to running a school. It is not simply that universities are considerably larger, commonly employing staff numbered in their thousands with annual turnovers of a billion pounds or more, though that is part of the complexity. Vice-chancellors need to be vastly energetic, resourceful and multi-talented. Far more so even than school heads.

They need to be financially highly literate, exceptionally capable organisers, accomplished public speakers, subtle persuaders, academically very strong to gain the respect of their staffs, and politically highly astute to manage the often highly articulate interests that they have to juggle. I have been awed by the quality of vice-chancellors since I “crossed over” two years ago. 

Vice-chancellors’ pay has been much in the news all summer, particularly following pressure from Lord Adonis, Tony Blair’s former head of policy and Jo Johnson, the universities minister. Both have taken particular exception to the salary of one vice-chancellor, said to be over £450k. I’m not sure that the naming of individuals has added to the quality or dignity of the debate.  Nor do I think making comparisons with the pay of the prime minister or of football managers adds to the discussion. 

Vice-chancellors should certainly be paid highly. But I doubt if there is a need to be paid figures quite as high as some. There are again good grounds for believing that highly talented leaders will come forward even at lower pay levels. As a rule of thumb, perhaps the top vice-chancellors’ salaries for the largest and most successful world-class universities should be capped at £350K, and the top pay of the heads of the largest schools or heads of MATs should be capped at £220K.

Too little, too late

It was disheartening over the summer to see the attacks on the universities, with newspapers on right and left joining in, and little by way of response. Universities UK, the body that represents the vice-chancellors, very late in the day produced arguments in the defence of universities against various lines of attack. How much better it would have been if a statement had been made as soon as the attacks on VC pay and other concerns began to appear, especially as they came over the summer amid widespread reports of very high levels of student debt. Even if there was no link at all between the increase in charges to students and the levels of VC pay, it still “smelt” bad. 

All the leadership needed to say was something along the lines of: “We hear and understand the public concern on a variety of issues connected with universities. We will be examining all these concerns very shortly and will come back with our considered responses.” They might well have added “British universities are ranked as the best in world rankings and are highly valued by their local communities and by many students, and bring much economic, social and cultural enrichment across the country”.  

But it’s harder to assert the moral arguments for education when those at the very top of their institutions are portrayed as too keen on their own pay, especially at a time of hardship and economies for many across education. The best leaders instinctively understand this. What a great thing it would be if a handful of vice-chancellors and heads were to seize the initiative and voluntarily decide to cut their pay. We need this lead. It is obduracy from the top, not the critics, who are damaging the standing of universities. 

Sir Anthony Seldon is vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, and a former master of Wellington School

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