STAFFING COST & SALARY REVIEW FOR INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS
Take control of your staffing budget without compromising on educational quality.
Save at least £250,000 per year by eliminating the hidden costs that are placing pressure on your staffing budget and adding little value.
Have you cut all your operational costs but still can’t balance the budget?
In a post-VAT world, independent schools are having to fight harder than ever to stay afloat. Even the most financially stable institutions are being tested by a perfect storm of falling income and rising costs.
The immediate response is obvious: reduce all non-essential spending to create headroom while protecting the product.
But what happens when there is nothing left to cut?
At Steed Education, we help independent schools balance their budgets and reduce their staffing costs while delivering premium quality education.
As former head teachers, bursars and house parents, we understand the desire to keep budget cuts away from the classroom. However, given that staffing accounts for around 70% of a typical school’s costs, it is inevitably an area that needs exploring.
With deep enough insights, most schools can identify hidden costs that have very little impact on the core educational offering. Small adjustments can therefore lead to significant savings, without eroding quality or trust.
Ultimately, it is about achieving value from your staffing budget while delivering value to your students.
Achieving value from your staffing budget may mean:
Timetabling all Science/English/Maths lessons at the same time so they can be setted.
Staffing lunchtime or boarding house duties with fully qualified teachers.
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Employing teaching assistants or support staff to perform these tasks.
Offering whatever options students and parents want, even if that costs the school more money than the fee income it brings in or saves.
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Implementing a flexible timetable that maximises specialist teachers’ time and reduces reliance on cover staff.
Removing a declining subject for every new one that is added.
Staying in the TPS for fear of backlash or industrial action.
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Joining a pension scheme with lower contributions and offering higher salaries instead.
Senior leaders will be aware that changes have the potential to affect both parents and staff.
Any cuts must therefore:
Be rooted in fairness
Deliver educational value
Align with the school’s ethos
By making informed decisions based on these factors, you can allocate your staffing budget more effectively, without impacting on the core offering or the school’s reputation.
“What you have done is to analyse our data and present it back to us from lots of different angles, in ways that we hadn’t previously considered. We are now looking at our staffing differently.”
— COO of a leading UK boarding school
The Staffing Cost and Salary Scale Review
A personalised and impartial financial review service designed for independent, international and boarding schools that:
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Are planning for the future
Year-on-year fee increases are no longer viable in a post-VAT world, meaning a new, more sustainable financial model is required.
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Need to cut costs quickly
After projecting a balanced or deficit budget for the first time, these schools require deep analysis of their financial position to inform decisions.
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Require an urgent restructure
All non-essential and operational costs have been cut, and a complete restructure is required to secure the school’s future.
Save at least £250,000* per year on staffing.
We use some twenty cost-reduction measures to help you:
*The average amount saved for most of our clients in the first year. Actual savings depend on your school’s financial position and staffing structure.
→ Uncover hidden costs and balance your budget.
→ Protect your high standards of teaching and learning.
→ Offer a varied yet cost-effective academic programme.
→ Maintain the confidence of both parents and staff.
→ Break the SLT impasse and get buy-in from the entire team.
→ Implement a sustainable financial model to prepare your school for the future.
Make informed cost-reduction decisions
We work closely with your team to analyse your financial position and make practical suggestions that maximise your staffing resource and preserve academic quality.
Prepare your school for the future
Our detailed templates make collating and adjusting data simple, giving you an objective view of your financial standing and the real long-term impact of different staffing decisions.
With career-long experience of leading independent schools, we provide the objective authority needed to overcome structural tensions and ensure the whole team is in alignment.
Secure buy-in from the SLT
How the Staffing Cost & Salary Review works
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The project begins with an initial kick-off meeting with the Head, the CFO and the staff members responsible for gathering the data. This often includes someone from the Academic, Finance and HR teams.
We explain the nature of the project, what you can expect throughout the collaboration and what is required of your staff.
This meeting will also include a discussion around your school’s ethos, ensuring that we have an accurate picture of your institution and what you are trying to achieve before we begin.
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We will provide several templates to help you easily collate your school’s data. This gives us a comprehensive view of your current financial position, covering metrics such as class size, headcount, salary scales and staffing efficiency.
During this stage, we will need to liaise with:
The Finance team
The HR team
The Director of Studies
The Co-Curricular and Pastoral Teams
Once your team has populated the templates, we will use our dedicated financial tools to identify the specific measures your school can take to reduce costs without eroding trust or quality.
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At the end of the project, we will present our insights to the Head, the Bursar, and the SLT, providing an opportunity for comments and feedback.
We translate complex financial data into a compelling story that non-specialists can easily follow. This ensures the whole team understands your financial position and the rationale behind each suggestion we make.
We prefer this meeting to take place in-person; however it can be held online if necessary.
Following the initial presentation, the report will typically go to the F&GP and Education committees of the Board. We are always happy to attend Board meetings to present or answer questions.
By the end of the project, you will:
✓ Generate immediate and long-term savings by uncovering the hidden expenses that are consuming your budget without adding value.
✓ Make confident, fair and data-driven decisions that more easily secure buy-in from the wider SLT and move cost-saving projects forward.
✓ Stay in control of your school’s finances with tools that allow you to continuously monitor your financial position in-house.
✓ Secure your school’s long-term financial security and maintain the confidence of staff, parents and governors.
“The presentation of the data gave us the clarity required to make the necessary changes. The work completed supported us on a very clear pathway to making significant financial savings. This work saved us another 12 months of work. It has been very helpful.”
— Head of a London Day School
Your template toolkit
The Staffing Cost & Salary Scale Review includes a core set of financial templates that together tell the full story of your school staffing budget.
Financial Metrics Template
Track measures of your school’s financial and business performance so that the Board and SLT can easily identify and address issues.
Staffing & Operational Efficiency Metrics Template
Track measures of your school’s financial and business performance so that the Board and SLT can easily identify and address issues.
For schools requiring deeper insights into complex areas, we also offer two optional templates:
Total Staffing Cost Template
Track measures of your school’s financial and business performance so that the Board and SLT can easily identify and address issues.
Boarding Staffing Cost Template
Discover how profitable, efficient or costly your boarding provision is with an in-depth analysis tailored to boarding schools.
Teacher Commitment Calculator
A deep dive into teachers’ academic, administrative, co-curricular and pastoral commitments to understand how your teachers are spending their time.
What does the Staffing Cost and Salary Review include?
Kick-off meeting (in-person or online)
3 core financial templates
Financial Metrics template
Staffing and Operational Efficiency Metrics Template
Total Staffing Cost Template
Teaching staff efficiency audit
Teaching staffing cost review
6-8 weeks of collaborative support
Detailed data analysis and presentation
Objective data-backed suggestions
Why choose Steed Education?
We are consultants who have in-school experience of leading staffing cost transformation projects for independent and international schools. We know that timetabling constraints mean you can’t achieve 100% efficiency on staffing, and we understand the need to manage costs while protecting academic values.
Mark Steed
With 23 years of experience leading five distinct independent and international schools, Mark has navigated the same pressures many Heads face. He brings the educational insight required to ensure the academic team feels heard, translating complex cost-reduction measures into a compelling case for change that protects and strengthens academic excellence. Mark provides the objective authority Heads need when making difficult decisions about the curriculum and staffing.
Founder
AssociateDavid Palmer
David brings a rare combination of experience as a Chartered Accountant, teacher and bursar. Having spent 14 years on the financial-operational side of the independent school sector, he is adept at identifying hidden inefficiencies that drive up costs but have very little impact on whether or not a parent chooses the school. David analyses your school’s financial position from various angles, revealing unexpected savings that deliver measurable short- and long-term results.
We understand how schools work
Having spent our careers working in independent schools, we are well-versed in the complexity and foibles of school staffing. These insights allow us to produce a report tailored specifically to the needs and context of your school.
We get involved in the project
Unlike financial benchmarking services, we use some 20 staffing efficiency measures to uncover hidden costs that are unique to your school, revealing exactly where you are overspending and by how much.
We provide distance from staffing decisions
We combine in-school experience with third-party impartiality to ensure recommendations are objective and fair. By giving the SLT ‘plausible deniability’, we distance you from the burden of responsibility that often comes with making difficult staffing decisions.
We focus on value for money
Our goal is to help you achieve a financially sustainable staffing model that delivers value for money. We provide tools and templates to help you continuously monitor your school’s financial and operational health, without needing to seek further external support.
Support from audit to implementation
Beyond the initial audit, Steed Education provides experienced and skilled support to guide schools through a cost reduction project.
Our additional services include:
Budget Scenario Planning Tool that allows schools to model future budgets.
Project Management of the Cost Reduction Programme
Project management of a migration from old to new salary scales
Human resources support
Running sessions for SLT on how they might reduce costs
Running sessions for Boards on the dynamics of staffing cost reduction
Providing expert services for Salary Review Appeal Boards
Cut costs and add value for your students.
For some schools, a lower staffing budget ensures short- and medium-term viability. For others, it frees up funds to reinvest into enrichment activities. For all, it enables schools to make data-informed staffing decisions.
Our work has enabled our clients to transform their schools in a number of ways. These include:
Restructuring their school to a financially sustainable curriculum model, securing the school’s future.
Making informed staffing decisions about how to spend the teacher budget by evaluating the cost of specific decisions (e.g., the hidden salary cost of allocating a particular time allowance to a teacher for a position of responsibility).
Undertaking a ‘strategic downsizing’ that reduces staffing to match student demand, preventing the school from going into an operational deficit.
Reviewing teacher salaries and allowances - this often means drafting a new pay policy and creating and then migrating to a new salary scale.
Evaluating how to get staff savings and value from merging with another school.
Evaluating whether or not a school has a viable future and whether investing more into the school would be money well spent, or a waste of resources.
Frequently Asked Questions
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If your staff salary levels align with sector norms, but you are still breaking even or making a loss, yes.
Although they provide a good reference point, benchmarking surveys don’t tell the whole story. For instance, they do not factor in the value of staff benefit packages or how many students the teacher is dealing with at any one time. Our analysis goes into far greater detail, uncovering the hidden costs and inefficiencies consuming your budget without adding much value.
Unlike many other consultants we get involved. We don’t just give broad brush benchmarking data - we will indicate that particular departments are overstaffed and by how much. We can even help by drafting the criteria for scoring staff as part of a redundancy process.
In one school, for example, we managed the move to a whole new pay structure and presented it to both the Board and the staff consultative group on behalf of the SLT.
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We have developed some twenty ways to reduce staffing costs. However, it is unlikely that all twenty methods will work in every school.
Our approach aligns with your school and your ethos.
For example, one school might decide that the schoolmaster/schoolmistress model of teachers interacting with students on the games field and doing boarding house duties is fundamental to the ethos of the school; another might be happy to have all of its games provision led by external coaches.
Therefore, our aim is to provide analyses that allow senior teams to make informed decisions about how they want to allocate their staffing budget.
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Projects typically last around 6-8 weeks. However, this depends on the services you opt for and the time it takes your team to gather the required data. We keep in touch regularly throughout the project, both through calls and emails, to ensure that everything is progressing satisfactorily.
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We work with a limited number of schools at any one time, and we allocate slots on a first come, first serve basis. If you are working to a tight timeline, please enquire as soon as possible to ensure we can meet your schedule.
Please note that, in our experience, it usually takes around one month to get buy-in from the SLT and complete the onboarding paperwork.
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Yes. We do not publicise the names of our clients, and any reviews or case studies are fully anonymised to protect the privacy of your school. All files and analysis are stored within a secure, access-restricted system and are only shared with those involved in the project.
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This depends on many factors, including the type of provision at your school and what pastoral and cocurricular structures are in place.
During the Staffing Cost and Salary Review, we identify the optimal staffing allocation for your school and provide clear, practical suggestions on how to achieve it.
Reducing your staffing costs does not need to impact on quality.
Our Staffing Cost and Salary Review gives you the impartial, data-driven insights you need to achieve value from your staffing budget while delivering value to your students.