In the eleven years I’ve been at the helm of the Institute of School Business Leadership (ISBL), the conversation about school business professional (SBP) pay has been depressingly consistent.
We have made important inroads in securing SBPs as integral members of the senior leadership team, but pay parity with other senior leaders lags significantly behind. Many colleagues are still undervalued, taken for granted and demotivated.
While some of this is a result of an unsustainable workload and policy uncertainty, pay disparity remains a real concern. This is perhaps less about the money than about the lack of value we place on the role.
The value of SBPs is undisputed. Impact evaluation studies carried out as far back as 2010 robustly demonstrate the positive impact a good SBP has on an institution. More recent publications also highlight their critical importance.
However, a study conducted by Hays revealed that our education system is experiencing a supply crisis of capable and highly skilled business professionals. It pointed to pay as one of the determining factors.
The National Careers Service suggests SBP salaries start at £25,000, with the most experienced enjoying up to £55,000. More anecdotally, my inside knowledge of the system tells me that in the trust environment, the disparity is even more extreme: some CFOs earn up to £120,000, while others earn less than £50,000. Concerningly, the size of the trust is not always the determining factor.
If we’re hoping for regulation changes to improve pay outcomes for SBPs, we will perhaps be waiting for a very long time. Last week, ISBL took the bold step of publishing evidence-based guidance on SBP pay in the form of an SBP pay framework. We hope the sector will do the right thing and lead this agenda without the need for government intervention.
Of course, in the event that the Labour Party prioritises SBPs as part of new support staff pay negotiations, we hope this pay framework will provide important evidence for ongoing consultation work.
We hope the sector will do the right thing and lead this agenda
We are not seeking to prescribe pay, nor are we lobbying for legislative measures that would impose salary levels on schools or trusts. However, we do believe it is reasonable to provide employers across the sector with a guide linking qualifications, experience and accountability with proportionate pay ranges that ensure rewards are commensurate with the role.
The framework uses the headteacher pay scales as the baseline for recommendations – a very reasonable starting point – and then applies a weighting according to qualifications, experience and accountability. In the case of trusts, we have used a range of national benchmarking sources to inform our thinking.
As an example, let’s take a maintained primary school in inner London with a headteacher on spine point L17 of the leadership scale. Applying the formula to a degree-qualified SBP with partial accountability for a key area of the operation and significant strategic experience would return a salary of £52,467.
For a trust outside of London with a CEO on a salary of £130,000, the formula for a professionally qualified practitioner with full accountability and education leadership experience returns a salary of £86,450.
This guidance applies to roles where there is an identifiable lead SBP, CFO or COO. With the rise of specialist roles, the framework does not seek to address the nuances of a range of functions that may support central teams within a trust.
Research and evidence tell us that a deputy head is typically paid around 70 per cent of the salary of the headteacher. Likewise in trusts, senior directors earn on average 70 per cent of a CEO’s salary.
We believe that a highly qualified and experienced SBP is as important to their organisation as a deputy head. Therefore, our starting point for calculations is 70 per cent of the leader’s baseline salary, after which further weightings can be applied.
The ranges within the framework are deliberately broad and allow employers to calibrate three formula variables: qualifications, experience and accountability. Employers will need to make a judgment as to which of these factors (in many cases all) need to be as close to a 100 per cent weighting as possible in order to attract the best and most appropriate candidate (or indeed to retain the current incumbent).
We are in no way seeking to undermine the incredibly important role of pedagogically focused leaders; this framework simply aims to appropriately and fairly value the worth of school business leaders.
It cannot be right that there is currently such disparity in our system, with some SBPs enjoying close to 80 per cent of their headteacher’s salary while others are paid less than 30 per cent of theirs.
Access the pay framework here
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