Thursday, April 08, 2010

College accounts and principals’ salaries

The Skills Funding Agency has posted on is site, a spreadsheet of the 2008/9 college accounts for both general FE colleges and sixth form colleges. It’s sad but true that these attract most interest when it comes to principals’ salaries. These accounts do offer material for useful benchmarking.

On the subject of salaries, looking at general FE college principals and comparing like-for-like (some colleges have been merged out of existence and others have emerged), it appears that average principal has had a 4.4% pay rise in 2008/9.

Even if a few of those principals will be hit by the new 50% tax rate, I think here may be some pressure in 2009/10 for pay restraint amongst college senior post holders.

Friday, April 02, 2010

Stakeholders, politicking and elections

Next week the election will almost definitely be called. Whoever wins in May, there will be a huge influx of new MPs as so many are retiring at the general election. Alongside the political turnover and maybe change, there are major developments in the regulatory landscape: in post-16 education there are new quangoes plus changes in the role of local authorities; in social housing a nearly-new regulator is introducing a new set of standards. All this poses opportunities and threats.

With all this going on, have the leaders and managers in public services been thinking about stakeholder management? Probably not in many cases. Even if you are busy, it is helpful to identify and strengthen critical relationships.

Last month Inside Housing had a excellent article on navigating relationships with national and local politicians successfully. It has relevance well beyond social landlords.