Harris could save millions by reducing executive spending to that seen at other large MATs, new analysis shows

Harris would save more than £4 million if its spending on six-figure salaries were the same, per pupil, as that of England's biggest academy trust.

 

England’s second-largest academy chain would achieve all of the likely savings from a redundancy process it is currently putting frontline staff through, if it could reduce its payments on senior staff to the level seen in its largest rival, analysis by Education Uncovered reveals.

On Friday, this website carried a detailed long-read piece on a move by the Harris Federation, which runs 55 academies, to make 45 school-based staff redundant.

One union source described the move as the largest set of redundancies they had seen, in decades working with schools, academy trusts and local authorities.

The federation has not put a number on the likely savings to be achieved. However, Education Uncovered has carried out calculations and used them to compare the amount currently being spent by Harris on six-figure salaries against those in England’s other nine largest academy trusts.

Harris appears not be including its highest-paid staff in its cost-cutting drive. This piece looks at savings which could follow if it did.

The background

Harris is proposing to make 45 staff redundant, the south London-based academy trust having warned that it was facing an “unfunded pay rise for teachers of 2.8 per cent and for support staff of 3.2 per cent,” with rises to employers’ national insurance contributions and falling pupil rolls across the areas in which its schools operate all contributing to budget pressures.

More than 100 employees, at 13 Harris academies, took part in meetings about the cuts last week, as their jobs were included in the “pool” for possible redundancies. However, with the cuts targeted at individual schools, none of Harris’s expensively-remunerated central staff appear to have been included.

Harris has also drawn scathing responses from teaching unions by not producing a detailed business case for the cuts, including not specifying a figure in terms of the money that it intends to save by making the posts redundant.

Therefore, in the last article I included some possible savings estimations, based on very broad-brush assumptions about the level of saving per employee whose job was cut.

At one of the schools affected, Harris Academy Orpington, the federation had suggested that cutting a modern foreign languages teaching post would “potentially save more than £40k”. If all of the 45 jobs to be cut were at a saving of £40,000, this would equate to a saving of £1.8 million for Harris in total.

However, with some middle and senior management posts involved, at school level, this may well be an underestimate. I assumed, then, a savings figure per job of double that, at £80,000. A total of 45 job cuts, at a saving of £80,000 each, would equate to £3.6 million.

The comparison with other trusts

It is apparent that Harris could save the above sort of figure by just reducing its spending on its highest-paid managers, per pupil, to that seen in England’s other largest academy trusts.

This becomes clear when you consider exactly how much Harris is spending on its best-paid people, and how this far outstrips that of England’s other biggest 10 academy trusts.

Harris has by far the highest-paid individual working within the state-funded schools sector in England, with Sir Daniel Moynihan, its chief executive, paid £515-£520,000 in 2023-24 in salary alone. This was more than £200,000 more than that paid to any other individual within the top 10 largest trusts in 2023-24, my analysis of those trusts’ accounts shows. So cutting Sir Daniel’s pay down to that of these other top-paid leaders - three of them received £290-£300,000 in 2023-24 – would in itself achieve a six-figure saving.

Number of individuals receiving high salaries in England's largest trusts, at three benchmark levels

MAT name	Pupil nos	Employee nos, £100k+	£140k+	£200k+	£250k+
UNITED LEARNING TRUST	65455	45	6	1	1
HARRIS FEDERATION	41998	56	20	6	2
ORMISTON ACADEMIES TRUST	34704	35	6	2	0
ACADEMIES ENTERPRISE TRUST	34076	32	13	1	0
OASIS COMMUNITY LEARNING	32813	42	5	0	0
OUTWOOD GRANGE AT	30834	27	4	0	0
ARK SCHOOLS	30222	39	15	0	0
DELTA ACADEMIES TRUST	29248	18	3	1	1
THE KEMNAL ACADEMIES TRUST	22964	29	8	2	1
STAR ACADEMIES	22870	31	7	1	1

Source: multi-academy trust accounts. 

 

But further scrutiny of Harris’s data shows how its generosity towards others at the top-paid end, again relative to other trusts, extends far beyond that of Sir Daniel. It had 56 people paid at least £100,000 in 2023-24 in salary alone, which was higher than the figure for any of the other larger trusts (the largest trust, United Learning, was next on 45, though it has 56 per cent more pupils than does Harris). Harris also had 20 people on £140,000+. And it had six people receiving £200,000 or more, which was more than the other seven largest trusts combined. At the £250,000-and-higher mark, Harris had two people, which as for all of these other measures was the highest within these top 10 largest trusts.  

This then translates, of course, into Harris spending much more in total on £100,000 salaries, and at higher-still salary benchmarks, than do other academy trusts.

In 2023-24, Harris spent roughly* £8.1m on salaries at or above £100,000. This is more than £2 million higher than that of the next-highest spender, which again was the largest trust, United Learning, on £5.6m. Looking only at salaries of £140,000 or more, Harris’s spend was £4.1 million, which was almost six times that of the lowest spender among these 10 large chains – Outwood Grange, on £700,000 – and approaching £2 million more than the second-highest spender, Ark Schools, on £2.4 million.

On salaries of £200,000 or more, the gap between Harris and the rest was the most stark in proportionate terms, with its spending of £1.6 million more than three times higher than that seen at the next-highest spender – the Kemnal Academies Trust – and with three of these large chains not having any £200,000-or-more employees listed in their accounts.

The key metric, however, may relate to how much Harris spends per pupil on these high salaries, again relative to other chains, and how much it could save if it reduced its spend on them, again per pupil, down to the level seen elsewhere.

Harris spent £193 per pupil on six-figure salaries, compared to £86 at United Learning; £97 per pupil on salaries at £140k and higher, compared to only £18 at United Learning; and £39 per pupil on salaries in excess of £200k, compared to nothing at three of the other largest trusts.

The tables below show how much Harris could save if its spending on high salaries – at each of the three benchmarks I’ve set here – was the same per pupil on this as it was at each of the others of England’s largest chains.

Academy trust spending at £100k+ salary level, and potential savings to Harris 

MAT name	Pupil nos	Total spend, 100k+, £m	Per pupil, £	Potential saving for Harris, £m
UNITED LEARNING TRUST	65,455	5.6	86.24	4.5
HARRIS FEDERATION	41,998	8.1	192.87	0.0
ORMISTON ACADEMIES TRUST	34,704	4.4	128.08	2.7
ACADEMIES ENTERPRISE TRUST	34,076	4.5	130.88	2.6
OASIS COMMUNITY LEARNING	32,813	5.1	156.34	1.5
OUTWOOD GRANGE AT	30,834	3.4	110.75	3.4
ARK SCHOOLS	30,222	5.2	170.57	0.9
DELTA ACADEMIES TRUST	29,248	2.4	82.06	4.7
THE KEMNAL ACADEMIES TRUST	22,964	3.8	167.00	1.1
STAR ACADEMIES	22,870	4.1	179.93	0.5
Totals/average spend	345,184	47	135.29016	2.4

Source: multi-academy trust accounts. The final column shows how much Harris would save if per-pupil spending at this benchmark were at the level of this particular trust. 

 

In terms of spending on people on salaries of £100,000 or more, again Harris spent £193 per pupil on these in 2023-24, which more than double that of United Learning. So, it would cut its spending on this by £4.5 million if it spent the same on this, for each of its pupils, as does the largest chain, United Learning. UL spends below average per pupil on such salaries, however. But even if Harris spent at the average level, it would still save £2.4 million.

The figure of £4.5 million would appear, based on my assumption of an £80,000-per-job saving in salary costs for 45 people being made redundant, to be higher on its own than the kind of savings Harris is looking to make through its school-level redundancy drive.  

Academy trust spending at £140k+ salary level, and potential savings to Harris 

MAT name	Pupil nos	Total spend, 140k+, £m	Per pupil, £	Potential saving for Harris, £m
UNITED LEARNING TRUST	65,455	1.2	18.4	3.3
HARRIS FEDERATION	41,998	4.1	96.6	0.0
ORMISTON ACADEMIES TRUST	34,704	1.1	31.7	2.7
ACADEMIES ENTERPRISE TRUST	34,076	2.2	63.8	1.4
OASIS COMMUNITY LEARNING	32,813	0.8	24.2	3.0
OUTWOOD GRANGE AT	30,834	0.7	22.7	3.1
ARK SCHOOLS	30,222	2.4	79.2	0.7
DELTA ACADEMIES TRUST	29,248	0.8	27.0	2.9
THE KEMNAL ACADEMIES TRUST	22,964	1.4	59.2	1.6
STAR ACADEMIES	22,870	1.4	61.7	1.5

Source: multi-academy trust accounts. The final column shows how much Harris would save if per-pupil spending at this benchmark were at the level of this particular trust. 

 

Similarly, it would save between £700,000 and £3.3 million if it reduced its spending on salaries of £140,000 or more to those of other academy trusts. 

Academy trust spending at £200k+ salary level, and potential savings to Harris 

MAT name	Pupil nos	Total spend, 200k+, £m	Per pupil, £	Potential saving for Harris, £m
UNITED LEARNING TRUST	65,455	0.3	4.5	1.4
HARRIS FEDERATION	41,998	1.6	38.6	0.0
ORMISTON ACADEMIES TRUST	34,704	0.5	13.0	1.1
ACADEMIES ENTERPRISE TRUST	34,076	0.2	7.2	1.3
OASIS COMMUNITY LEARNING	32,813	0.0	0.0	1.6
OUTWOOD GRANGE AT	30,834	0.0	0.0	1.6
ARK SCHOOLS	30,222	0.0	0.0	1.6
DELTA ACADEMIES TRUST	29,248	0.3	10.1	1.2
THE KEMNAL ACADEMIES TRUST	22,964	0.5	20.0	0.8
STAR ACADEMIES	22,870	0.3	12.9	1.1

Source: multi-academy trust accounts. The final column shows how much Harris would save if per-pupil spending at this benchmark were at the level of this particular trust.

 

And, at the level of £200,000 or more salaries, savings based on spending money as others of the large trusts do would range from £800,000 to £1.6 million.

In each of these three cases, benchmarking its per-pupil spending on high pay against United Learning would save Harris a seven-figure sum. This will make it extra concerning, for critics of Harris’s latest move, that the most well-paid staff appear not to have been in the sights of its cost-cutting drive.

It should be noted that all of my calculations above are based on data provided in academy accounts that relate to spending on senior staff in terms of salaries only. If employers’ pensions contributions are included, the savings are likely to be greater**.

Harris might well reply that, with all of its academies operating in and around London, and with many of them in central London, it would be expected that its salary costs would be higher. Again, looking at the comparison with United Learning, some of its schools are in London, but this is only a minority. Some of the other large chains, such as Delta and Outwood Grange, operate in parts of England where living costs are substantially less than in London.

However, looking at the differentials within national pay scales, which apply to teachers and school leaders within the non-academy sector and which are followed by many academy trusts, it is clear that the London factor does not fully explain the premium Harris is paying for its most well-remunerated staff.

In 2023-24, mainscale teachers in inner London were paid between 15 and 23 per cent higher, depending on where they were on the scale. And, at the level of the highest-paid teacher, there was only a difference of 6.7 per cent between what they would be paid outside of the London area, and in inner London.

By contrast, at each of the three benchmarks £100k+, £140k+ and £200k+, Harris is in some cases spending more than 100 per cent more, per pupil, than its rivals on such salaries.

The £140k+ benchmark may be particularly significant, since the highest sum that a headteacher in a local authority maintained school would normally be paid in 2023-24, according to the School Teachers’ Review Body, was £139,891. Thus, where Harris was paying, in that year, anyone above £140k this would either be school-level headteachers, being remunerated above what would normally occur outside the academy sector or, more likely, central executive leaders. And, to remind you, Harris had 20 people in this position of receiving £140,000 or more in 2023-24

From all of the above, there would appear to be substantial grounds for savings, if this spending was benchmarked against that of other large trusts. Have Harris’s leaders, including its trustee/directors, considered this?

-A union source has also made the point to me that there could be other aspects of spending that Harris could cut back on, beyond staff costs of any kind. Specifically, its spend on its offices in Croydon, south London, might be reduced given that other academy trusts are using schools as the base for central staff. 

 

*I say “roughly” as salary data, published in academy accounts, is generally only disclosed in £10,000 bands. So these calculations are based on the assumption that the actual pay is in the middle of the published £10k band.

 

**My comparison, in terms of possible savings for Harris based on making 45 people redundant, came from an assumption that each was paid £80,000, meaning that this would save £3.6 million. Given that the figures used in this piece for high salaries within multi-academy trusts relate to salaries alone, on a like-for-like basis that £80k figure should be considered a saving in salary alone. It certainly does not seem an underestimate to think that each person made redundant were being paid this amount in salary alone. So, on that basis, £3.6m may be on the high side – meaning the savings potentially available to Harris through reducing its top pay bill may be even more significant.