According to an insider at a Harris academy in south London, ‘a significant number of mainstream teachers’ have already received letters of potential redundancy, as NASUWT accuses Foundation’s £520,000 pa CEO of ‘underhand tactics’. By our education correspondent, GENE BRODIE
State-funded schools that are administered by the Harris Federation have initiated a formal “consultation” process aimed at making dozens of teachers redundant, a move which has attracted the condemnation of a teachers’ union.
Job losses: Harris City Academy in Crystal Palace is one of six of the federation’s schools in Croydon
There are three Harris primary “academies” in Croydon and three secondaries. The Harris Federation is a massive education business which has 44,000 children in its 55 schools around London and Essex. It was founded by a carpet salesman from Peckham, a prominent donor to the Conservative Party.
The Harris Federation now operates from offices on Wellesley Road, in Croydon town centre, where its chief executive, Sir Dan Moynihan, pockets a salary of close to £520,000, making him the highest paid academy boss in the country.
And now they are looking to shed around 45 teaching jobs.
According to teachers working at Harris-run schools, the consultation process began last week, as staff and pupils returned at the start of their summer term.
As one Harris insider told Inside Croydon, the consultation process announced last week “appears to be a prelude to a group redundancy process, with a significant number of mainstream teachers already receiving letters of potential dismissal”.
Sitting pretty: Sir Daniel Moynihan, £520k per year, and now making teachers redundant
The concerned teacher noted: “While such actions are not uncommon in the private sector or in economically distressed institutions, this step is highly unusual for an oversubscribed and ostensibly thriving school.
“The likely underlying cause may lie in the unsustainable cost structure of the Harris Federation itself.”
The teachers and unions are very suspicious of the gravy train that Moynihan and his execs at Harris HQ have created for themselves. Publicly available financial data indicates that more than 30 individuals within the Federation receive annual remuneration packages exceeding £200,000. This may include some principals, senior managers of some of the largest schools, but is thought to comprise mainly Moynihan and his HQ executives.
In the context of stagnant growth within the Federation, increased employer National Insurance contributions and other, growing financial pressures, it appears that frontline teaching staff are being targeted for cuts: “Potentially as a means to protect top-level executive pay,” the teacher said.
“This raises serious questions about governance priorities and the Federation’s commitment to delivering high-quality education, rather than preserving a corporate-style leadership model,” they said.
There has been no formal announcement from Harris, but the south London teaching grapevine suggests that the “consultation” move has been made across other academies, with instructions issued from the Federation’s office to local principals last week.
‘Disgraceful’: NASUWT’s Matt Wrack has condemned the ‘underhand’ redundancy process
Teachers’ union the NASUWT accused Moynihan and Harris of “using underhand tactics”.
The Harris Foundation schools in Croydon include Harris Primary Academy Croydon, Harris Primary Academy Haling Park and Harris Primary Academy Crystal Palace, and secondaries Harris Aspire Academy Croydon, Harris Invictus Academy Croydon and Harris City Academy Crystal Palace.
Matt Wrack, the acting general secretary of the NASUWT, said: “Harris Federation are trying to make dozens of dedicated teachers redundant and are using underhand tactics to try and force this through.
“Their disgraceful behaviour is causing untold stress to our members and will only serve to damage children’s education.
“This academy trust has tens of millions in the bank, pays its boss more than the Prime Minister and yet is seeking to get rid of 45 teachers in its schools.
“There needs to be an immediate halt to the proposed redundancies and a proper collective consultation with NASUWT.
“NASUWT teachers are angry at this attack by their employer. They are united in their resolve and tell us that sacking teachers will only harm education provision and shatter already low morale across the trust.”
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The coffee is starting to be smelt with regard to Harris and Academies in General. They cost far more to run than most Local Authority Education Provision and have not changed the trajectory of acheivement standards in State Education despite being provided with greater resources, new build locations, greater selection/exclusion powers and political preference over the last three decades.
It seems that cost pressures are thus being applied by the Department of Education to this Bloated Self Serving Bureacracy that is manifestly inefficient in education provison with huge sums of money being paid to it’s Managerial Bureaucrats. It is inevitable that such an inappropriate form of education will at first cut the service that it is subsidised to provide rather than reduce the surpluses it has been making out of State funding or dare tackle it’s extortionate management costs.
Maybe there is a wage increase at the top tier to be paid for.
Average salary for Harris teachers advertised is on average £50k (£40-60k) . £50k is the average salary in London before tax. Sir Daniel earns the equivalent of 10 teachers’ salaries., which seems a bit much but that means that his net pay after tax will be £286,439 per year, or £23,870 per month.
But is he worth as much as three and a bit prime ministers?
This is a classic example of why you shouldn’t let private companies run our public services. Our money just ends up in the pockets of shareholders and senior executives instead of being used to provide the service we all deserve.
We know that Labour are just continuing with Conservative austerity, so there isn’t enough money being put into our services in the first place. That is an extra reason to cut wasteful dividends and executive salaries and use the money more eficiently to pay for more front line staff.
As far as I can see, academy trusts employ more people in non-school based managerial roles at higher overall costs (in real terms) to manage far fewer schools than the local education authorities they replaced. And, of course, they are totally unaccountable to the public who fund them or the communities within which they operate and the parents of their pupils barely have any real influence. Highly paid jobs for the top boys and girls who make little or no practical contribution to the quality of the education experienced by the pupils whose attendance pays them.
Lefties hate academies because they are freed from the dead hand if the LEAs
. But most work closely with them. The Durham University study found little to separate them from council schools in terms of attainment but the teachers mostly seem to appreciate the freedoms they have. If it’s true that the ‘managerial’ class has grown that might be partly explained by the fact that many teachers are classed as managers.
Academies are accountable to governors or trustees who include parents
Which study was that Christopher? One you read about in the Daily Heil?
Durham University’s Professor of Education and Public Policy, Stephen Gorard, said in January “research has found that academy schools are no better at raising attainment than the schools they replaced … academies in general are no longer helping to reduce the clustering of poorer pupils in specific sink schools – one of their original purposes – or to increase social justice in education. In fact, they are making it worse.”
I was a school and FE college governor for over 30 years. I have friends and relatives who teach in schools which are part of academy chains and relatives who are/have been on governing boards of academies (including chairs).
Their view is that the management structures of local academies, as described in the article and the union statement, are distant, top heavy, over paid and out of touch with classroom reality.
The ability of governing boards of individual schools generally (and not all academies have governing bodies), and parents in particular, to influence the policies, activities and behaviour of an academy trust may be almost nil. Trusts can, and do, ignore the wishes of parents and governing bodies of individual schools (if the trust chooses to establish them) and can impose their policies despite governing body opposition.
The wider support which used to be an obligation on local education authorities, staff development, support for children with SEND, speech and language support etc is not guaranteed to be provided by an academy trust.
There are ,of course, Regional Department of Education Directors and their advisory boards (largely made up up of senior MAT people) who have an oversight role. Ever read anything about their actions locally. Feels to me rather like rabbits guarding the lettuce!