Pay of Katharine Birbalsingh at Michaela free school rose at least 10 per cent last year, say trust’s accounts as they warn of risk of its teachers being harmed by pupils from other schools

One of England’s most prominent headteachers saw her pay rise by at least 10 per cent last year, her academy trust’s newly-published accounts have shown.

Katharine Birbalsingh, of Michaela Community School in Wembley, north London, saw her salary increase from £100-£105,000 to £115-£120,000 in 2019-20, with her employer’s pension contributions also increasing, from £15-£20,000 in 2018-19 to £25-£30,000 last year.

Birbalsingh’s salary increase was therefore in the range 9.5 to 20 per cent, depending exactly where in the published bands her pay was.

The figures come as Michaela’s accounts also warned that a risk that the academy trust running it faced was that its teachers might be “harmed by pupils from other schools while out in the street”.

Birbalsingh’s total pay and pensions package increased by the largest amount of any academy leader, among seven sets of published accounts for 2019-20 I have seen so far.

However, in the accounts of each of these seven trusts there was a rise for its leader in 2019-20, with minimum salary increases, among those trusts for which salary information was published against an individual’s name, sitting at five per cent.

Background

Salary packages for the 2019-20 academy year will, of course, have been set out by 2019. So they predated covid. We are still relatively early in the reporting season, with ministers having extended the deadline for accounts publication until late February.

But these first sets of financial statements show some tentative indication that the number of six-figure salaries in the sector was continuing to increase, pre-coronavirus at least.

Birbalsingh’s total pay last year of £115-£120,000, or £140-£150,000 with employer’s pensions contributions included, looks relatively modest compared to that of the leaders of  large multi-academy trusts, where £200,000 salaries have become routine.

However, it should be borne in mind that her package is for leading a single school, whereas most of the largest pay packets in the academies sector go to chief executives overseeing multiple institutions.

Comparison with pay ranges in non-academy sector

A comparison with pay ranges for headteachers as set out in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) for 2019-20 show that Birbalsingh received nearly 24 per cent more for leading Michaela that year than she would normally expect to receive were it operated in the local authority sector.

A school of Michaela’s size in Brent would see its leader normally* paid £70,194 to £92,667 in 2019-20, last year’s STPCD shows. So effectively Birbalsingh received a premium of at least £22,333, or 24 per cent, as a headteacher because the school is an academy (free schools are types of academy).

Michaela, which has become something of a standard-bearer for traditionalist approaches to schooling, boasts an outstanding Ofsted rating and reported some of the best GCSE results in England in 2019.

So many might argue that the pay rise for Birbalsingh was well-deserved. Nevertheless, it seems worth charting here.

It is also interesting to note that the salary of one of Birbalsingh’s three** deputies – Katie Ashford – appeared not to increase at all in 2019-20, according to the accounts.

Ashford saw her salary reported as in the £70-£75,000 range for last year, as it had been in 2018-19. Her employers’ pension contributions did seem to increase, from £10-£15,000 to £15-£20,000.

It has long been interesting to speculate whether academy leaders might be benefiting from bonus packages which do not extend to other employees, especially given that data analysis has suggested that in academies, headteachers are slightly better-paid than in local authority schools, but other employees are slightly worse-paid.

There appears to be a mistake in Michaela’s accounts, in that the statistics section reports the highest-paid person as on £100-£110,000, whereas the pay package details against Birbalsingh’s name are as set out above: she was paid £115-£120,000.

Other details in Michaela’s accounts

In its accounts every academy trust has to set out a list of “principal risks and uncertainties” it faces. A couple of Michaela’s are unusual.

One of these risks is stated to be “detractors from the outside harassing staff on social media”.

Perhaps more remarkably, the accounts warn of another risk: “teachers being harmed by pupils from other schools while out in the street”.

I have never seen a similar warning in academy trust accounts, where issues such as finances and the impact of possible bad Ofsted inspections – which would seem more likely to pose an existential threat to organisations – are usually the focus in this section.

The accounts also warn of another risk: of failing to fill its sixth form, which has been operating at less than capacity.

It seems surprising that this school, which as mentioned above has been able to highlight very good results at GCSE, might fear not filling up, post-16.

But this is exactly the message of both this set of accounts and of official data on Michaela. In the accounts overview, the trustees point out that Michaela has capacity for 120 pupils in each of year 12 and year 13. However, the accounts then state that the sixth form – presumably as a whole, so the two year groups together – while “growing” has only 100 pupils.

The school opened its sixth form to year 12 pupils in September 2019. Official data show that, as of January last year, it had 63 students in year 12 – 41 girls and 22 boys – with the figure of 100 presumably relating to this academic year, when both year 12 and 13 students will be on the roll.

Michaela’s official application to the government for it to be set up said it would have 120 pupils in each of the two sixth form years by the second year of that sixth form having opened.

The high standards of entry to the sixth form at Michaela may be playing a part: its website currently mentions students needing at least seven GCSE grade sevens to enter.

The school also only has 120 pupils per year group up to year 11, so it needs to recruit either all of these into the sixth form every year, or compensate for any loss by recruiting from other schools.

Other academy trust pay packages

I’ve looked at the accounts of another six academy trusts so far.

All of them appear*** to show increases in the pay packages of their leaders.

The pay of one of these chief executives – Karen Roberts at The Kemnal Academies Trust or TKAT – actually rose even more than that of Birbalsingh, growing by at least 10.3 per cent.

Looking at Roberts’ pay in isolation, however may be a slightly unfair comparison, as her employer’s pension contributions went down last year: from £10-£15,000 in 2018-19 to in 2019-20.

In 2019-20, Roberts’ full pay package was listed as including a payment of £35-£40,000 as “salary in lieu of pension contribution”. This took her total remuneration to £215-£220,000.

This was a minimum of only 2.2 per cent higher than the figure of £205-£210,000 for the previous year.

Other salary rises saw Wayne Norrie at Greenwood Academies Trust moving from £170-£175,000 to £185-£190,000 (a minimum gain of 5.7 per cent) and Rob Tarn at Northern Education Trust going from £188,000 to £197,000 (an increase of 5 per cent). At Outwood Grange, Martyn Oliver saw his salary seemingly increase, from £165-£170,000 to £170-£175,000, while at Delta Academies Trust, Paul Tarn (Rob’s brother) saw an increase from £200-£205,000 to £205-£210,000.

The United Learning Trust, England’s largest academy chain, also published its accounts, though, as ever, it was impossible to be sure of the pay of its chief executive, Sir Jon Coles. Coles, though a trustee at the United Learning Trust, is paid by its parent charity, the United Church Schools Trust, where he is not a trustee.

So no remuneration details are disclosed against his name in the accounts of either charity. However, those of UCST show that its top-paid person rose from £230-£240,000 to £240-£250,000 last year. This suggests a raise for Sir Jon in 2019-20.

Overall, the highest-paid people in the six trusts for which data was available against an individual’s name saw their salaries rise by an average of 5 per cent in 2019-20, with the number of people on six-figure pay also showing signs of rising.

We will have to wait a year until the publication of accounts for 2020-21 to learn of any impact of the covid emergency on what has seemed a steady and continuing rise in pay at the top end in the academies sector in recent years.

*It is possible for schools within the local authority sector to go beyond these normal ranges for headteacher pay, in exceptional circumstances.

**It is only possible to see the pay package of Ashford because she happens to be a trustee at Michaela. Michaela’s other deputies are not trustees and therefore, under academy accounts rules, do not have to have remuneration details published against their names.  The statistics section of the accounts shows that the three highest-paid people after Birbalsingh all received £70-£80,000 last year, compared to 2018-19 when there were two on that amount and one on £60-£70,000.

***I say “appear to” as, in a couple of cases the stated pay bands have gone up, but the top of the previous year’s pay band for the trust leader in question ends at the start of the higher pay band the following year. So, technically, I guess it would be possible for pay not to have increased, though why in that case would the published band increase? It would make matters a lot simpler, of course, if precise amounts were required to be stated.