The Mulberry Schools Trust said that Dr Ogden’s salary had been rigorously benchmarked, with an external consultant employed to “establish the appropriate pay range for the CEO role,” and pointed to it having taken on more schools over the period.
This piece features a league table of the fastest-rising academy executive salaries over the past three years, among those known to have been paid £200k-plus in 2024-25.
Others topping the list have already featured substantively on my website, Education Uncovered.
With Dr Ogden now the DfE’as regional director for London, the revelation may underline the entrenchment of what many will see as high executive pay within England’s new education establishment, putting into context some quite mild concerns raised about this in the recent DfE white paper.
That 2024-25 package was at least £84,000 more than the lead official on England’s largest education authority, Hampshire, despite the latter overseeing 20 times more pupils last year, in its non-academy schools, than did the Mulberry Schools Trust.
Her 2024-25 package comprised £230-£240,000 in salary, plus £65-£70k in pension payments, to oversee eight schools and a teaching school hub. Three years previously, she had been on £150-£155k, plus £35-£40k in pensions, to run four schools plus the hub.
Dr Ogden saw her salary in that position rise by around £83,000, or 54 per cent, over the three-year period 2021-22 to 2024-25. Inflation over the period was 20%, while teacher at top of main scale saw pay rise 18%.
Vanessa Ogden, formerly of the Mulberry Schools Trust and now overseeing academisation across London, had package worth around £300,000 in 2024-25.
New: New government academy supervisor had one of the fastest-growing salaries of any trust executive in recent years, new analysis shows
educationuncovered.co.uk/news/new-gov...
Great that government acknowledging that troubling stats we see re young people – in this case NEET numbers – may be in part a product of ed policy. www.theguardian.com/education/20... But, with the Francis review having concluded that this is basically successful, policy not looking v joined-up.
Love this from the London Centric newsletter: www.londoncentric.media/p/parkun-lon... Looks like - or should be - an epic PR fail from Nike: not the best to be criticised by Parkrun.
And…was another school leader, heading a Catholic multi-academy trust, right to put children’s “needs” in quotes?
Plus, in this diary column, I look at the sudden departure of someone who has been a regular fixture in England’s top-paid academy leaders in recent years, with a salary and pensions package approaching £350k as head of one school and CEO of it and another six.
A delve into the seemingly peripatetic world of Lee Miller, revealing some extraordinary complexities around today’s school management set-up in England.
New: Academy executive now listed near the top of the management structure of three academy chains, operating in different regions of England. How is this possible?
educationuncovered.co.uk/news/academy...
The very best thing we could do to help Year 11 in the next two months is give them hard copies of everything they need to revise. Take out the need to use a phone completely.
We need to be the adults for them. They cannot resist distraction on own. We need to take the distraction away.
Endless hype about AI. But my attempts to try to use it (Microsoft Copilot) in recent weeks for things like data extraction from docs, plotting things on maps etc show lots of errors, dead-ends, misleading indications that then need retraction, etc. Just not very reliable, as yet.
Harris was approached for comment before the school holidays, but has yet to respond.
Harris, of course, gets very good results and also has a staggering record in terms of Ofsted inspection outcomes. But sceptics wonder about the distribution of rewards for this success.
We have also seen the government not going near a national pay and conditions structure for academy trust executives, despite now requiring this at classroom level for teachers.
A union source added that unions had sometimes sought to argue with Sir Dan Moynihan, Harris’s £530k CEO, that exec pay and conditions should be within scope of negotiation, but that this had been “stamped on” as not part of the negotiating agreement.
So public interest questions about what positions Harris’s extraordinary largesse at the top is funding, and the work expected in return, seem vital.
Local authorities have to declare positions and identities of anyone paid £150k or more a year; LA directors work during school holidays; and Harris had 23 ppl on 150k-plus last year, inc 11 ppl with higher pay+pensions packages than ed director of Eng’s largest LA, which is far larger than Harris.
Central staff on the support service side are on contracts with holidays as seen outside of schools sector, so working through much of the school holidays. But during this time those on the education side are not routinely in the office, which “almost shuts down at the end of term,” I was told.
Lack of transparency in academy accounts means public is not told which positions within trusts command high salaries. But Harris had seven people paid £200k-plus last year, and it’s understood some of the most senior leaders are education directors.
Some senior execs at England’s 2nd-largest academy chain are receiving pay and pensions in region of £300k, but with much of head office shutting down during 13 weeks of school holidays, I understand.
New: Salary of £250,000, but not required to work during the school holidays? Harris Federation faces questions about position of its super-well-remunerated education leaders
educationuncovered.co.uk/news/salary-...
Agh...a new term approaches+ a new round of anxiety arrives via "computer says no" pupil attendance communications. These take no meaningful account of children's circs and thus destroy trust between parents and schools. Will @bphillipsonmp.bsky.social look at impact of these letters in the round?
Concerning quotes with respect to this school feature in this piece. Camden council, which passed on a quote from the school in December saying that safe and effective education for pupils and the wellbeing of staff were its priorities, has been approached for comment.
Strikes at this school, which as a foundation school is not an academy, have been ongoing since September, and were generating anguish on the picket line when I visited in December.