DfE regional director’s post re-advertised with a £25,000 salary boost

Headhunters have been forced to jack up the pay for a senior civil servant vacancy by £25,000 after their attempts to replace one of the government’s longest-serving mandarins faltered.

The Department for Education has re-advertised for a new north west regional director “at a more competitive salary” after failing to find its ideal candidate.

Sector leaders have argued the case exposes the “tension” between ministers’ desire to hire more experts while being straitjacketed by civil service wage structures.

But Pepe Di’Iasio, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, acknowledged there was “probably little choice” other than to offer a higher salary.

But he said it “may stick in the throat of schools, which are struggling with financial pressures,” that money could be found for DfE appointments while they struggled to recruit teachers because pay often fell behind other graduate professions.

Schools Week revealed in March that Vicky Beer, the DfE’s longest-serving regional director, was set to retire at the end of April.

Regional directors oversee school structures in their area, deciding on academisation of struggling council-maintained schools and on re-brokers between trusts.

A job ad for Beer’s replacement originally offered a £125,000 annual salary.

Re-advertised

The department wanted applicants to have “demonstrable experience of leading change inclusively with your team, including delivering system improvement and transformation”.

But last week, the vacancy was readvertised at £150,000 a year. The DfE noted this was “a more competitive salary” that remained within the civil service’s director level banding.

Di’Iasio added: “The DfE is keen on telling off [academy] trusts over executive pay, but might do well to reflect on the reality that you have to pay at the level needed for the role.”

That principle should be extended to ensure schools and colleges could recruit and retain the teachers they needed, he said.

Pank Patel, a former regional schools commissioner before the position was rebadged as regional director, said the situation underlined how academy trust leaders – “who are the kind of people DfE will want to attract” – often were paid more than £125,000.

But it would be “a high-ranking salary” in the civil service.

Schools Week’s chief executive pay audit last month found academy trusts bosses took home £142,000 on average in 2024-25, compared with £135,000 the year before. Eighty-eight earned more than £200,000.

Last year, the top of the maintained school pay spine for heads was more than £153,000.

Mark Greatrex, an academy trust boss who used to work for the DfE, said: “There’s a tension here. DfE pay has never been competitive with the market it serves.

“If they are going to want to bring people from the sector, it’s not going to work within the pay structure they’re currently working to.”

The latest published DfE data shows only three regional directors were paid at least £140,000 a year. They included Beer, a former trust leader.

Top of the table

Nigel Minns was at the top of the pay table, earning a minimum of £150,000, despite only becoming regional director for the East Midlands in March. He had been Warwickshire council’s director of children’s services for the previous eight years.

His salary is just £10,000 less than his boss, regions group director Tim Coulson, earns.

The figures don’t include the wages for Vanessa Ogden, London’s regional director. Before starting last month, she was the chief executive of the Mulberry Schools Trust, receiving between £230,000 and £240,000.

Meanwhile, the pay floors for the other six regional directors – all appointed from other civil service jobs – were between £95,000 and £110,000.

One executive recruiter, who asked not to be named, noted: “Maybe the DfE needs to look at standardising what they require from the regional director position and if this is more of a civil service role.

“Given that other government departments and other parts of the DfE don’t need sector specialists to undertake senior executive roles, does that need to be the case for the regional directors?”

‘Experience of leading change’

Among the “essential criteria” for the advertised regional director job is “excellent system leadership skills gained within the education or care sector, local or national government”.

Candidates must also have “demonstrable experience of leading change”, including “system improvement and transformation”.

The advert said the new regional director would be “the front face of many aspects of the department’s work”, as they delivered “a number of key programmes which sit at the heart of major policy priorities”.

They would lead their area’s RISE school improvement team – a flagship Labour policy – and take decisions relating to the “oversight of the academy trust system”.

Shortlisted applicants for the north west post will be invited next month to a “partnership engagement conversation” with Coulson, a former council director of children’s services and academy trust leader.