Revealed: How the Seckford Foundation plan to spend nearly a million pounds on managers for under 300 children

The Seckford Foundation are as I have previously reported advertising for staff. So far they have advertised for 17 management posts as well as an undefined number of teaching roles to work in the proposed Beccles and Saxmundham Free Schools.

Clearly many of the managers will have a teaching role as well but the last figures we have seen showed that around 210 children would start in September across both the Saxmundham and Beccles schools.

I have produced an org chart below showing the posts Seckford have advertised:



Using the application further particulars available from the Seckford website I have calculated the highest and lowest costs of employing these staff (note I have ignored on-costs such as pensions and NI so these costs would in fact be up to 30% higher).



So a total cost of nearly a million pounds - and of this nearly half is just the "top tier" of Principal, Heads, Deputies and Assistants (Senior Leadership Team).

Having done this I compared it with the numbers of children that had applied for places in the two schools to calculate the cost per child of these 17 management posts.

Apologies, the numbers for Saxmundham and Beccles were the wrong way around in my original post

So from the £5325 average funding available per child, Seckford plan to spend up to £4260 on these 17 management posts. And remember, nearly half of this is just on the 7 "senior leadership" posts. These plans mean that there will initially one manager for every 12 children. One Senior Leader per 30 children ie a Leadership grade staff member for every class!

That leaves £1065 per child for all the other teachers and other costs. That or somehow they have a much higher than average funding per child compared with other Suffolk secondary schools.


Sources
Seckford Principal and Headteachers Further Particulars
Seckford Other Staff Further Particulars
Numbers of applicants for each school (as supplied by Suffolk County Council FOI request)
Average Spending per child in Suffolk secondary schools (Guardian using DfE Data) 

The spreadsheet above is available to download on Wikisuffolk