Australia’s top paid education bureaucrat Tony Cook earns nearly $1m in salary and superannuation
Bureaucracy blowouts and soaring salaries are rampant in education departments across the country, with bosses pocketing up to $1m while teachers scrounge for pay rises. FULL LIST
Soaring salaries and burgeoning bureaucracies have become the norm in Australia’s education departments.
An exclusive analysis by News Corp has found the pay packets of top education executives, and the number of high-earning personnel, are continuing to swell despite commitment from governments to shrink executive numbers.
Teachers battling for better pay deals say they are not impressed to learn of the generous remuneration their bosses pocket while they battle it out in the trenches of the classroom.
Topping the list for the highest paid bureaucrat is the secretary of the federal Department of Education, whose remuneration has grown a whopping 45 per cent since 2019.
In 2023-24, Tony Cook took home $923,000 in base salary and superannuation, up from $636,00 in 2019-20.
His four deputies earned an average $501,800 each.
The highest-paid state education department executive in 2023-24 was Queensland’s director-general Michael De’Ath, who took home $698,000 in salary and superannuation, followed by NSW’s Murat Dizdar ($626,300) and Victoria’s Jenny Atta ($625,00).
Queensland also had the highest-paid second-tier state executive – the newly created associate director received $538,000 in base salary and remuneration in 2023-24.
Spokespersons for each department said the top level secretaries’ pay packets were set by tribunals in each jurisdiction, not the departments themselves, while in Victoria all senior executive salaries were determined by an independent tribunal.
The number of executive directors in the NSW department has grown a massive 68 per cent since 2019, a rapid increase the department attributes to the addition of the Early Childhood Outcomes division in 2022.
A NSW Education Department spokesman said NSW had the “largest education system in the Southern Hemisphere”.
With 2200 schools, nearly 800,000 students and 90,000 staff, the department maintains NSW’s bulging bureaucracy still keeps the proportion of high-level executives under the government’s target of 0.4 per cent of total workforce.
NSW Teachers Federation president Henry Rajendra said bureaucracy budgets could be better spent on teachers.
“These figures come as no surprise to the profession,” Mr Rajendra said.
“The union has long held the view that such expenditure is best spent on employing additional teachers to directly support the learning of our students and help address the workload issues impacting principals and teachers.”
This analysis used annual reports and self-reporting from the federal, NSW, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia education departments.
A federal Remuneration Tribunal spokeswoman said Mr Cook’s salary package assessed “the work value of the office”.
“It takes into consideration a range of factors, including its functions, powers, responsibilities and accountabilities; the complexity and scope of the office; and the characteristics, skills, experience or qualifications required of the office holder,” she said.
A Queensland government spokesman said Mr De’Ath’s remuneration considered his experience and skill.
“Salaries of directors-general of Queensland government departments fall under the Chief Executive Remuneration Framework and appointments consider the experience and capabilities individuals bring to the role,” he said.
The Australian Education Union declined to comment.
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Originally published as Australia’s top paid education bureaucrat Tony Cook earns nearly $1m in salary and superannuation
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