Unfunded teacher pay rises will make job losses “inevitable”, the chief executive of one of England’s largest multi-academy trusts has warned after facing strong criticism for proposing dozens of redundancies.
The Harris Federation, which has 55 schools in London, is consulting on making between 40 and 45 staff redundant across 14 of its secondaries.
The proposal has sparked strong criticism from teaching unions, with the acting general secretary of the NASUWT calling it “disgraceful”.
In an exclusive interview with Tes, Harris CEO Sir Dan Moynihan claimed the cuts at the trust would be “much deeper” if it did not take action now.
And there will be “catastrophic” consequences for schools if teacher pay is raised by nearly 4 per cent next year without additional funding, he warned.
School staff redundancies
Sir Dan said: “Both the leader of the NEU [teaching union] and the leader of the NASUWT, quite rightly, have been saying all year that the lack of funding for the teacher pay rise is going to lead to redundancies.
“Well - surprise, surprise - here’s a group of schools where it’s happening. It shouldn’t be a shock.”
Sir Dan said his trust faces a £6.75 million bill if the government adopts its initial recommendation of a 2.8 per cent teacher pay rise, added to a support staff rise of 3.2 per cent.
“It’s inevitable, with these unfunded pay rises there will be redundancies,” he said.
The Department for Education has said schools have “headroom” of £400 million in their budgets for next year, which will cover a 1.3 per cent pay rise.
Sir Dan also said that funding for national insurance employer contributions falls £1.5 million short for Harris, meaning that the trust is looking at an £8.25 million shortfall in funding in 2025-26.
His trust is proposing to save £4 million through the redundancies, and fund the remaining £4.25 million from its reserves.
If the teacher pay award is higher than 2.8 per cent - reports have suggested the pay review body has recommended close to 4 per cent - each 1 per cent more above 2.8 per cent will cost Harris another £3 million, Sir Dan said.
“There desperately needs to be higher teacher pay because, obviously, that’s been a key feature in the problems with teacher shortages,” he said. “But should they raise the rise to nearly 4 per cent and not fund it? I imagine that will be catastrophic for a lot of schools in terms of the quality of education they can provide.”
Cuts ‘much deeper’ if process delayed
Harris has been criticised for starting the redundancy process before the final pay teacher offer has been decided.
Sir Dan argued that the resignation date for teachers to leave at the end of the summer term is 31 May, and therefore the process had to happen before then or Harris would have had to wait until the next teacher resignation date on 31 December to make any changes.
“You’d have run the longest term of the year with salaries you know you can’t afford,” he said.
“And therefore, if the government doesn’t come through with the money, the cuts schools would need to make - not just ours - to balance the budgets in the remaining two terms of the year would need to be much deeper.”
He added that Harris will review its proposals if the government does announce more funding.
Falling rolls hitting secondaries
Harris’ difficult financial situation has been exacerbated by the speed with which pupil rolls have fallen in London, Sir Dan said. The trust has already merged schools and cut published admission numbers (PAN) to cope with falling primary rolls but its inner-London secondaries are also being hit.
One secondary in Southwark has an intake of just 50 students next year, against a PAN of 120 - which has already been reduced from 180.
Local authority forecasts suggest by just over 1,000 across Southwark in 2025-26, against the 19,451 on roll in the 2023-24 census. This figure is projected to fall to 16,711 by 2030-31.
The Harris Federation has reduced the PAN at three of its schools. “There are more schools that will follow, but it’s just a question of us watching and seeing what’s going to happen,” Sir Dan said.
He said Harris is not looking at secondary school mergers, but that some reorganisation is “inevitable” as smaller year groups pass through the system.
London Councils has predicted there will be a in the capital over the next four years.
Sir Dan said, based on falls in pupil numbers alone, one of his secondaries faces a £623,000 funding gap.
What about Harris’ £28m reserves?
However, unions have pointed out that in August 2024, according to its published accounts.
Sir Dan said £8 million of this cash is ring-fenced, and the remaining £20 million leaves the pot at 5.9 per cent of income. Harris’ income was around £363.9 million in 2023-24.
While the , it says that anything much lower than 5 per cent could be a sign of a “financial vulnerability and challenge”.
Sir Dan argued that spending more of Harris’ reserves than the planned £4.25 million is “not sustainable” because the trust needs cash for IT replacements, emergency building repairs and other capital works.
The NASUWT has also criticised Harris for failing to hold a collective consultation on the redundancies and provide a business case for them.
Sir Dan said it was “completely untrue” that the trust has failed to provide a business case, and that the trust has been consulting locally.
In an email exchange between Harris’ human resources’ team and the NASUWT, seen by Tes, a NASUWT rep said there was a “strong rationale” for collective consultation - but Harris reiterated in its response that there was no such requirement.
This response showed “disdain” towards teachers and amounted to “abhorrent behaviour”, the NASUWT said.
In response, Sir Dan told Tes that Harris is not legally required to hold a collective consultation because there are fewer than 20 people at any individual school being made redundant.
Defence of £515,000 salary
Sir Dan is the highest-paid MAT leader in England, earning more than half a million last year (£515,000-£520,000), and Harris has several staff members earning at least £190,000.
Tes put to him that his salary alone could pay for several teachers and support staff. The average teacher was paid around £43,000, though this excludes other costs such as national insurance.
“I lead fundraising in the organisation, and I bring in £3.5 million to £4.5 million annually. Every penny of that goes to improving schools, so that salary is covered multiple times over,” he said.
Asked whether high salaries make the scale of the redundancies at Harris problematic, he argued that the trust’s central costs are 4.6 per cent of its total budget, which he described as a “low average cost”.
The NEU has suggested that a
“The bottom line is we’re putting £4 million in to ease this,” Sir Dan said.
Impact on SEND provision
Asked whether staffing cuts will make it more difficult to support children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), Sir Dan said: “It will do. Our advice to schools is to protect SEND, and that is a reduction of last resort.”
Pressed on what protections Harris is putting in to protect its provision for pupils with SEND, he said the £4.25 million from Harris’ reserves is “to protect SEND”.
“That’s why we’re not fully balancing this year,” he added.
Warning of more job losses
Sir Dan said he did not know why there were not more reports of redundancy programmes of a similar scale at other big trusts, but speculated that some leaders were waiting for the government’s final pay and funding offer.
He said he expected that other trusts were looking at what they will have to cut, warning that the financial situation will be “really difficult” for all-primary trusts that attract less per-pupil funding than secondary school trusts.
Ahead of the government’s spending review in June, Sir Dan urged ministers to prioritise school funding.
“We have a massive shortage of teachers. Teachers’ salaries are so important - not funding the pay rise is likely to lead to stress and more job losses in schools,” he said.
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