The over crowding of our classrooms also emphasise how silly it is to give academy headmasters salaries of £240,000 which are more that 100% bigger than starter teacher salaries.

Here. You can be pretty sure that teachers don't earn £120,000 in their first year. In fact, a first year teacher in London earns £27,000, so that academy headmaster earns 789% more than a starter teacher. Of course, I don't really have a view ex ante as to what an appropriate multiple of a junior teacher's salary would be appropriate for the headmaster. If you went out and hired 7 teachers instead of that headmaster, would the school really run better? No, of course it wouldn't.

The rest of the article is idiotic too. Without knowing more about the way schools are run in other countries, the pupil-teacher ratio may not tell you very much. Here, schools now employ teaching assistants to help support teachers. I know for a fact - because Mrs Malry used to teach there - that French classrooms often don't have teaching assistants at all. I don't know what the position is in other countries. But when I was at school, classroom teaching was one adult per room only. Obsessing about pupil-teacher ratios, without taking into account the other improvements in staffing and pedagogy is unlikely to yield helpful results.

Update:

He has modified his calculation to say "more than 1000% bigger" than the out-of-London starter salary of £21,558. Good to see I'm having an impact.

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Filed under: Other blogs, Politics with tags eoin clarke, france, idiots, mathematics, teachers