I like money. It’s pretty much essential that I have some at the end of every month to pay for life’s little luxuries. Like food and water. But it can be a tetchy subject in education, especially in the FE sector, where it’s been harder to come by than coherent information regarding T levels.

So when a story breaks like the one about an interim college leader receiving £173,000 for seven months’ work, questions inevitably follow. The first being “How do I become an interim college leader?” and the second being “Where can I buy a gold-plated PS4 controller from the money I make as an interim college leader?”

In all honesty, I’m not privy to the hardships and trials that come with such a position and I assume that the pressure and workload are extremely large. But £20,000 a month large?

According to official statements, the pay lined up with market conditions. However, whether you believe that’s right and fair or whether you’re wondering which market folk are shopping at, I’m not sure it does a great deal for the sector’s public profile, perpetuating, as it does, the suspicion that the slings and arrows of cuts, funding issues and mismanagement are only ever borne at certain staffing levels and the hits that the sector has to take are ducked and weaved once you claw your way up to a higher pay scale.

Read more: Number of colleges paying leaders over £200k rises

More news: AoC eyes crackdown on high principal pay

Also of interest: High-profile college principal quits after warning over finances

‘Different things for different people’

Giving large salaries and bonuses to managers while pay for front-line staff incessantly dwindles has long been a bone of contention in FE, not least because the inherent intimation is that of worth. A college quoting pay that lines up with market conditions is all well and good, but those conditions only seem fixed for some whereas colleagues lower down have almost ever-present anxiety regarding the stability of their role. The market seems to sell different things to different people.

It’s an extremely stark message to send your workforce: that some people are worth each month what is very close to a starting lecturer’s annual wage, especially if those lecturers have to face working to the best of their ability in times of crisis for a college.

The right person for the job

There’s a wider argument that, without that level of pay, the role wouldn’t be filled or the right person with the right skills and background wouldn’t come forward. But, strangely, that argument isn’t one I find being used in regards to other levels of staff very often -otherwise we might find staff throughout the college on extremely high levels of pay indeed.

So the argument is one of worth; how it’s perceived and how it’s obtained. How, when it comes to certain positions in FE, it’s desirable to ensure that people are given what they’re worth, whereas in others that perhaps isn’t the first priority. Or the second. Or the eighth.

I’m off to apply to be an interim principal. And then I’m getting on Amazon.

Tom Starkey teaches English at a college in the north of England