Teaching is an occupation that seems to exist in two quite distinct financial climate zones. 

For the teacher in the classroom and the headteacher in their office, there have been years of austerity, during which pay was completely frozen.

For those at the very top of the tree, there appears to have been something of a bonanza. 

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It’s a polarised system, which seems to override the very principles of reward and compensation that should underpin rates of pay.

Insofar as it works, the system has ground out longer hours from those in schools, without huge expenditure, and at the same time has incentivised top leaders to act as overseers. It would be a triumph for human resources management had it not caused the long-term problem of falling recruitment and retention just as pupil numbers are rising.

Cost-benefit equation

Workload is a significant part of the cost-benefit equation. But pay itself carries very powerful messages to teachers (and to society) about:

• The value of the skills and knowledge we bring to the job.
• The value of the work we do.
• Recognition for achievement.
• Compensation for the value of the time given up for the job.
• Where we stand in the sector as a whole, in relation to others.

In recent years, these messages have been undermined by larger political and economic forces, such as the banking crisis and government pay policy in the public sector. 

At the root of the problem is the fact that teachers are regarded as a cost to the system. It isn’t politically or economically expedient to regard them as resources, even though many write creative lesson plans and have the performance art down to a T. 

They do the job of an army of awarding body examiners every week, answer barrages of emails, input and analyse tens of thousands of data items every year. Most importantly, they are in charge of the most important resources our country has - the human ones.

The going rate

The grafting-on of a multi-academy trust (MAT) layer to the education hierarchy has added another much higher cost, which the nation has apparently been able to afford. 

There has been no significant government pressure to cap the rewards of this layer. MAT boards at the top have been the ones to decide how much should be paid to the most senior staff, judged on the basis of the going rate for such people in the private sector.

Thus, while teachers are regarded as public servants driven by altruistic vocational values, who can only be rewarded if the country can afford it, leaders of MATs need to be compensated financially for the high-profile job that they do.

Between these polarised layers lies a widening gulf. It isn’t only the inflated salary that is the issue, but the differentials between those at the top and the bottom of organisations.

Apprentice classroom assistants get £3.70 an hour; the average pay for teaching assistants, according to Unison in 2019, was £12,081, term-time only.

Yet these people are often the ones working most closely with the children who would otherwise struggle to be in the classroom. Some assistants are “kicked, spat on, hit and sworn at on a daily basis”. 

Competing pressures

Much is made of the pressures suffered by those at the top, on six-figure salaries, but these seem to pale into insignificance when weighed against the pressures at the very sharp end of education.

Teachers are held accountable to such an extent that many flee the classroom for the sake of their mental health. Yet no account is taken of the sometimes unbearable pressure the system places on them.

The starting salary is £24,373 for teachers outside London, £30,480 in inner London. That means that a MAT leader on £150,000-plus is being rewarded five times the money of a hardworking teacher in their organisation.

Teachers work long hours - 50-60 hours a week is not unusual - so it’s hard to see how a top leader can put in five times that number. 

NQTs will be doing the most hours of the profession, as they climb the steep learning curve.

Disproportionate gap

Even when teachers reach the leading practitioner level of £41,267 minimum, the MAT leader is still going to take home more than three times that amount. It’s very hard to justify this disproportionate gap. 

Moreover, the skills and knowledge deployed by the teacher are much more academic and specialised. Those at the top may not even have a teaching background.

Perhaps what is most unfair about the current double standard is that teachers get pay increases only if their schools can afford to give them, and they have to meet very strict criteria. How often do top bosses find their pay tagged to financial performance and academic outcomes?

While this radical inequality persists, the discontent grows. The fact remains that public money is very frugally distributed at the classroom level, but there seems to be no accounting for the ways in which it is hived off at the top. 

We need to establish pay principles common to all layers in the sectors. At the very least, there might then be welcome transparency and a greater measure of fairness.

Yvonne Williams is head of English and drama in a secondary school in the South of England. She has contributed chapters on workload and wellbeing to Mentoring English Teachers in the Secondary School, edited by Debbie Hickman (Routledge)