By Jane Larsson, Executive Director

Information to guide the development of socially responsible policy and practice

In our work leading institutional improvement, we focus on social responsibility. We help school leaders and governing bodies to improve how they model social responsibility and how they educate students to develop as socially responsible citizens.

As a foundation for this work, strong trusting relationships between school leaders and their governing bodies are essential. An important first step is establishing equitable salary and benefits packages for educational leaders.

Each year, we conduct benchmarking research in collaboration with other international education associations to explore how international school leaders are paid. This year, 473 school leaders in 103 countries shared their salary and benefits data with us.

What did we learn?

Overall, key findings show that leaders who have completed higher levels of education earn more. Leaders who have more experience in leadership positions also earn more, as do leaders who work at schools enrolling higher numbers of students. However, despite our initial identification of a gender salary gap 9 years ago followed by ongoing surveys and reports, the gender gap persists, as do gaps identified in subsequent research related to ethnicity and contract type. Applying a demographic lens to our findings, men continue to earn on average 27,838 USD more than women, a statistically significant trend that has persisted over the last four surveys we have conducted. However, one positive change is emerging: the data shows that women with less than six years of leadership experience are closing the gap, earning on average 12,226 USD more than men with similar years of experience.

Hear from Jane Larsson, CIS Executive Director, as she summarises the findings from our research.

Looking at ethnicity, white leaders continue to earn on average 31,678 USD than non-white leaders. And one more data point for you: both white men and women earn higher salaries than non-white men and women respectively.

These findings led us to undertake additional analysis to compare the remuneration of locally vs. internationally hired leaders. The findings show that internationally hired leaders earn on average 47,566 USD more than locally hired leaders regardless of education level attained, years of leadership experience, or the number of students enrolled in the school.

As socially responsible leaders, it is our collective responsibility to develop equitable remuneration policies. We hope this information will help you to take a closer look into your school’s remuneration policies, whether you’re in a governance role, an ownership role or a school leader needing information to advocate for yourself and on behalf of your leadership team.