Nice work if you can get it

David Cameron is on the case of a South London primary school head teacher, Mark Elms, who reportedly took home more than £231,000 in pay last year. The PM says the public will be shocked by this, and argues that it proves the need for a salary cap in the public sector.

Let's first of all admit that numbers are a bit exaggerated. A large chunk of what Mr Elms banked in 2009 represented back pay from the previous year. Still, it looks as though last year he took home a basic salary of £83,000, a further £50,000 for work on a programme to raise standards in inner city schools, and £10,000 in overtime. So that's £143,000 in "true" 2009 earnings -- not an investment banker's deal, perhaps, but a big multiple of the average UK wage.

I'm not one of those who want public servants to be among the lowest paid in society, but I think Mr Elms's package is wrong on a number of levels:

* His basic wage of £83,000 is pretty lumpy, and teachers are always telling us how hard they have to work, yet Mr Elms in effect felt able to take on what looks like another full-time job on the inner city programme. (If it wasn't a full-time job, it earned him what most people would love to earn for their full-time jobs). How did he find the time? The school board says he worked evenings and weekends. Poor diddums.

* In the private sector, if you are good at your job, you're expected to pass on your expertise to your colleagues as a matter of course. You don't get paid a whole extra salary for doing it -- you may well get fired if you don't.

* And despite having two full-time jobs, Mr Elms was paid a further £10,000 in overtime! Where did that time come from? More importantly, nobody in a management position in the private sector, earning a base salary of £83,000, gets paid overtime. You just don't.

I'm a big believer that "the labourer is worthy of his hire", and there seems little doubt that Mr Elms is a fine head teacher. But the way he's compensated suggests that public sector HR departments have no idea of how compensation practices in the private sector actually work. Time for them to find out, I'd say.