LEADERSHIP FOCUS | FEBRUARY 2020
SBL on the leadership scale NAHT believes school business leaders (SBLs), who are part of the school leadership team (SLT), should be on a similar salary range as other SLT staff. However, many are paid under the arrangements for local authority staff and not on the ranges used for the school’s SLT. Here, Leadership Focus journalist NIC PATON speaks to SBLs about the issue of fair pay. ilesh Pandya neatly sums up one of the ironies – and the challenges – that school business leaders face when putting their heads above the parapet to ask for more money. “Because we oversee the budget and because we generally tell everyone to watch the pennies, I know many school business leaders really struggle to argue the case for their job descriptions to be evaluated,” says the director of finance and school business manager at Roding Primary School in Woodford Bridge, Essex. “They feel they will be contradicting themselves and given a hard time about it. I’ve spoken to many colleagues who feel this way, which is ironic given the savings
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they probably generate for their schools because of their ability to negotiate and scrutinise,” he adds. Earlier in this edition of Leadership Focus, we highlighted how the government’s proposal to raise newly qualified teachers’ (NQTs’) starting salaries to £30,000 by 2022 has brought into sharp relief the erosion of pay and pay differentials further up the teaching scale. So too it appears to have been something of a final straw for many increasingly disgruntled school business leader members. Rose-Marie Smith, school business manager at Long Furlong Primary School in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, sums up the anger: “Much though I value my teacher colleagues, the prospect of being paid the same
WORKLOAD IS TAKING ITS ‘TOLL BOTH MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY’
Alongside the SBLs who were happy to speak to Leadership Focus, a number contacted NAHT by email. Here is a selection of some of their, anonymised, comments. “Related to well-being and workload, I have concerns regarding the direction of travel regarding the sheer amount of financial reporting required by academies, including the move towards lots of benchmarking.” School finance director, Hampshire. “I feel the workload coming our way seems to be never-ending. More emphasis is going on fundraising because of the economic climate, which is exhaustive and majorly time-consuming with little reward. Where we are reducing support staff numbers, the time, effort and stress of restructures and redundancies are taking their toll both mentally and physically. “I am lucky in that I am financially rewarded in my school and seen at deputy head teacher level, which is at least recognition for the workload and stress. I just feel for those SBLs working under the same stress and pressure who are not being financially rewarded for it.” School business leader, Middlesex.
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