Charity Begins At Home: TeachFirst’s Executive Pay
In The News, Social Enterprise, Teach First Monday, April 16th, 2012
With all the talk of charity donations in the UK being hit hard by Tory attempts to clamp down on tax avoidance, we’ve been wondering how we could help education charities like TeachFirst to weather the coming storm.
One potential way that sprang to mind was by curbing the handsome amounts TeachFirst executives are currently paid. For according to the accounts for 2010/11, the eight TeachFirst execs earned over £60,000 per annum each (roughly $90,000), which is approximately 3 x the starting salary of a TeachFirst recruit.
Of these execs, one person made between £60,000 and £70,000 ($90,000 and $110,000), another between £80,000 and £90,000 ($127,000 and $143,000), four people made between £90,000 and £100,000 ($143,000 and $159,000), and one lucky person made between £120,000 and £130,000 ($190,000 and $206,000).
To put that into context, the UK average family salary is roughly £40,000 ($63,000). The average Secondary School teacher meanwhile takes home (before tax, of course) roughly £35,000 ($55,600) per annum. A Primary School teacher makes even less on average (£32,000/$50,000).
So to help with TeachFirst’s potential dip in donations we thought we’d restructure their executive remuneration to a level that was perhaps more realistic while at the same time help to facilitate further donations of money to the cause.
And to help us with our project, on their website TeachFirst have provided a helpful breakdown of the donations we could make, how much it’ll cost and who we’d help.
If we assume that the lowest figure from the TeachFirst executive salary bands (for argument’s sake) is their actual respective salaries, take an average of £35,000 from the three different salaries (UK household, Secondary School teacher, Primary School teacher), subtract this average from the eight respective exec salaries and total up the remaining amounts, we are left with roughly £375,000.
With £375,000 TeachFirst could:
- support 37,500 gifted-and-talented pupils without parental history of higher education through a day’s work experience to strengthen their university application.
- or provide 4,687 teachers with a Leading Learning training session to ensure that they are able to have maximum impact on children in their classroom.
- or assess 1,875 individuals through their rigorous assessment centre to ensure they are able to have a profound impact on their pupils
- or fund 750 gifted-and-talented pupil without parental history of higher education to get to university
- or fund 107 participants through the first year of the Teach First Leadership Development Programme, enabling them to reach over 16000 pupils.
- or reach 22,500 children – providing them with the education and access to life opportunities that they deserve.
Of course, our maths may need some work but even if our figures are a little out and there’s a slump in donations, it is still good to know that there is some money left in the pot.
This is a vindictive and petty article, couched in terms of reasonableness. The premise that TeachFirst need help in forthcoming tough times is wilfully misleading, given that the report from 2011 is one presenting remarkably rapid growth in activities and funds raised during that year – growth largely attributable to government grants and corporate support (neither of which is eligible for Gift Aid as it is). The repeated comparisons between the wages of its executives and average UK workers is also vaccuous. In what economic model outside of North Korea would the employer of 164 staff be paid the average national wage – particularly in a time of double dip recession?
What I saw when I looked at the accounts was an effective and well run company with numerous Outstanding features, generating a turnover of over £10 million. This perhaps explains its place in the Top 10 of Top Graduate Employers, as ranked by The Times. To be in this position with only eight employees earning above £60k suggests a very tight ship and an absolute minimum of indulgence. It would appear that the CEO does indeed earn a low six-figure sum (indeed, he/she is the only one who does) which, considering that back in 2009 The Guardian found that ‘The average chief executive of a blue-chip company now earns a basic salary of £791,000′, is pretty good going! Try finding someone with the experience and expertise to steer a company of this size for significantly less than that and good luck getting anywhere. Those who succeed in pioneering successful business models; particularly if, unlike most, their businesses benefit struggling children and schools rather than maximising profit, deserve to be reasonably rewarded for their initiative. Perhaps then others may seek to emulate them. This seems a counter-productive and embittered left wing assault on a welcome success story and thus a thoroughly depressing read.