Pay levels still not fair, says NAHT School Business Leaders Survey

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) lastest pay and responsibilities survey suggests that school business leaders' pay has increased by 9 per cent since 2016, but still falls behind the rest of the leadership team.

Getting the Best Deal?: NAHT Survey of School Business Leaders’ Pay and Responsibilities 2018 was carried out between April and May 2018, with responses from 439 school business leaders.

Key findings include:

• Three-fifths of respondents do not think their pay fairly reflects their role and the responsibilities they undertake
   
• The average salary for an SBL is £40,000 a year, up 9% from NAHT's 2016 survey but substantially below that of the rest of a typical leadership team
   
• Less than half (46%) of respondents have had their pay reviewed in the last 3 years
   
• More than three fifths (61%) work more than 45 hours per week, and almost two thirds (63%) said that their working hours have increased over the past 3 years
   
• The majority (81%) said that their workload has increased over the last year
   
• Almost half (49%) said they have not received any formal personal development in the last year, even though 70% are keen to undertake further formal qualifications to keep up with the demands of the role
   
• The main barriers to accessing CPD were time (68%) and funding (61%).

The report states: "As the government places more responsibility on these professionals to secure the best deals for their schools, we wanted to understand whether they themselves are securing a fair level of pay. SBLs are often paid under local government pay scale levels that fail to recognise their status and seniority and our members continue to report concern about pay. We decided to survey SBLs to understand how this has evolved since our two previous surveys in 2014 and 2016, and also to understand how their responsibilities are changing as growing numbers are working in group structures where school business leadership roles are often centralised."