Survey finds continued pay restraint for school and trust leaders

24th November 2022

Pay for school and school trust leaders remains lower than comparable roles in other sectors, according to an updated survey of the sector.

The Confederation of School Trusts has today released its 2022 salary benchmarking report in conjunction with partners XpertHR and Browne Jacobson. This is the second year the report has been published, offering a reliably current and comprehensive annual salary report of executive roles in school trusts.

Based on data from an XpertHR independent survey of more than 2,000 roles across 140 school trusts, the analysis found that:

• pay in the Trust sector is comparatively lower than other sectors when taking into account the level of responsibility carried by trust chief executives and senior staff
• pay has risen less quickly than in other sectors: below the average increase for charities and on par with the wider public sector.

Confederation of School Trusts chief executive Leora Cruddas CBE said: "Running a family of schools within a trust is complex, and the roles of chief executives and other senior leaders reflects that. They require diverse expertise across human resources, finance, estates, information technology, and communications to name just a few.

"As last year, though, we found pay in the school trust sector is not disproportionate, and is comparatively lower than other industry sectors, particularly taking into account the level of accountability for school trust chief executives."

Browne Jacobson head of HR services Emma Hughes said: "The updated benchmarking data can provide boards with added confidence and accountability for the decisions they will need to make on executive salaries.

"It is a core governance duty for boards to make fair, robust and evidence-based decisions about pay and rewards. A custom salary benchmarking service is a clear aspect of meeting that expectation so the rationale for boards to include it in their formal executive salary decision making is clear."

XpertHR survey manager Jennie Jakubowski said: "XpertHR works throughout the education and charity sectors to produce salary benchmark datasets and tools to help boards to make fair, evidence-based decisions about executive reward.

"We are pleased to continue working with the Confederation of School Trusts and Browne Jacobson to creating this resource. We are also very grateful to the more than 147 school trusts which participated in the survey, helping to ensure that the benchmark data is representative."

The school trust sector report offers a high-level summary of the data. Trusts who wish to undertake an actionable, comprehensive benchmarking exercise using the full survey results and detailed regional and cross-sector data can subscribe to the XpertHR Cendex platform. CST members are able to subscribe to Cendex at preferential rates.

For further information on the benchmarking service, please contact cendex@xperhr.co.uk or for CST members visit the report page on our website.