Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the level of remuneration that chief executives of multi–academy trusts are being paid.

The responsibilities of school leaders have changed significantly in recent years, with many now running several academies in a multi-academy trust and taking on sponsor academies that require considerable improvement. It is therefore essential that we have the best people to lead our schools if we are to raise standards. We are clear, however, that academy trust salaries should be justifiable and reflect the local context. Consideration on pay should include factors such as: individual responsibility, retention and recruitment needs, the current and historic performance of the trust, the size of the trust, and the make-up of its academies, for example the mix of primary and secondary schools.

Our expectations on this are clearly set out in the Academy Trust Handbook and our Setting Executive Salaries guidance. These documents provide the key contextual factors that trusts should be considering when setting or reviewing pay, such as educational performance, financial performance, degree of challenge at the trust, and the cost of total remuneration package. Academy trusts are transparent on pay and we have further strengthened transparency on pay by introducing new requirements for trusts to publish the number of employees whose benefits (including salary, pension contributions, taxable benefits, and termination payments) exceeded £100,000 on their website, in £10,000 bandings. Where employees are also trustees, this information must be disclosed in £5,000 bandings.

The department continues to challenge high pay where it is neither proportionate nor directly linked to improving pupil outcomes. We have been reviewing our current approach to challenging high pay and will start engaging trusts on our findings and this year’s high pay activity soon. We have embedded high pay into the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s risk assessment processes for a holistic understanding of trusts we have concerns over or that are in intervention, coupled with our approach with Integrated Curriculum Financial Planning and Schools Resource Management Advisors.