When you heard about the South London primary school teacher who earned £274,000 last year, what did you think?
Were you outraged? Did you think that was a fortune for running a school? Or maybe you thought he is worth every penny?
If you have children you will no doubt spend a lot of time commenting on their education and if you have children in the state system, as I do, you will be very opinionated about the quality of the school and their teachers.
Education, like health, has become an incredibly political issue – much as pensions
are becoming.
Of course to be fair to the head, Mark Elms, his basic pay is £83,000 – still not bad for a teacher you might say. The rest of his money came in the form of £20,000 in overtime payments, pension contributions and effectively a bonus of more than £100,000 for taking part in the City Challenge programme.
Of course, we might all ask how someone earning over £80,000 can claim overtime, as working long hours surely comes with the territory of leading a school.
Probably the bit that is most troubling to those of us who do not understand the structure and nuances of the state education system is why he could earn £100,000 for doing work on the side, and what exactly is the City Challenge?
I thought it might have been some kind of charity run until I read it is to do with improving education standards in the state sector.
Hard to argue with that, but not hard to argue with the fact a working headmaster who is well paid should be able to be involved and more than double his salary in doing so.
And, of course, City Challenge sounds like one of those New Labour schemes that provided employment for a group of education cronies but never delivered anything truly tangible that an ordinary voter would recognise.
However, put aside the numbers relating to Mr Elms’ situation and what this debate does is highlight how we, as a country, value education. We put a price on it in the public sector, and essentially the price we want to attach is not very high. Over the past 40 years, politicians have constantly meddled in education, and over time, this has devalued the profession of teaching.
Does that ring a bell with financial advice? For the vast number of the population financial advice – and good financial advice – should be free. That is the model the banks have tried to convince customers they get and that has perpetuated through the industry. If it was more widely understood that financial advice could not, and should not, be free then we probably would not be going through the whole RDR phase.
I am not opposed to RDR as such, but what I do think is there should be a wider discussion about the value of advice and what that exact value should be, thereby giving consumers a starting point to understand what they are being offered.
Any chance of a trade body like the ABI stepping forward on this one? No, I didn’t think so.
Lawrence Gosling is the founding editor of Investment Week. His views are his own, any comments to him at lawrencegosling@sky.com
