The International Schools Review Forum

There is always a comparison between faculty and senior leadership salaries and this is one of the key factors causing friction between the two groups. What do you all think is a reasonable difference (x3 or x4) between the salaries of a principal or head of school and teachers should be if we're looking at tier 1 schools with 1000 - 1500 students in a big Asian city? No school names please.

The research into this (available on HeadsNet if you have access) says that it is typical for the Principal to earn twice what the highest paid teacher gets, and the Director to earn twice what the highest paid Principal gets.
In my experience, that doesn't always hold true, but it's the only yardstick I've seen that's backed by research, and it has had some relation to the truth at every school where I've been privileged to know those numbers.
Of course, if you're getting promoted within from teacher to Principal, you can't expect to immediately double your salary. You'd more likely make the jump to Deputy first, I suppose, with a nice raise. But schools do tend to resist giving wonking massive raises, so no matter how big a promotion you get, I wouldn't expect more than a 30% raise for teacher to Principal. Maybe 50% if you magically jumped from teacher to Director.

Thank you, sid. Makes a lot of sense. Can't access 'HeadsNet.' Could you give me the full URL, please?

It’s a group. Password protected.

Headnet is an invite and members only group.

The Headnet research is both range restricted and skewed, though the end results arent that far off from the whole of IE. It really centers on the definition of the "highest paid IT" being the difference of currently, historically or possible.
In general on average, lower senior leadership makes about 2X the median IT salary, upper senior leadership makes 3x and executive leadership makes about 4X. The global IT average is about 32K.

What about the rumours about Exec leadership making 400K+ in SE Asia? This number sounds higher than corporate CEOs in mid-cap firms.

@fine dude

Not a rumor, its true, its just an outlier that deviates greatly from the general average. There is also a difference between executive leadership (such as an HOS) for an IS who has among other attributes, appointment/dismissal authority within an IS and executive HOSs (such as president or director) who oversee/lead a group or chain of ISs.