Why were only 12 academy trusts written to over high pay?

Why were only 12 multi-academy trusts written to by the government this month, as it sought to continue to present itself as acting tough on high salaries in the sector?

The Department for Education published a list of this dozen organisations, which it said had been written to by Eileen Milner, chief executive of the Education and Skills Funding Agency, on the basis of either having someone on £150,000 or more, on multiple people paid in excess of £100,000.

This was its first intervention of any kind on the basis of information published in the last set of academy accounts, for 2017-18.

But, given that the DfE said itself in July, in its annual report and accounts for the academies sector, that 146 trusts paid at least one person £150k or more in 2017-18, with Education Uncovered then revealing that 166 individuals were in such a position that year, again it was puzzling why only these 12 had been selected.

Indeed, while it is impossible to tell without a trawl through all of their accounts how many trusts had paid more than one person £100,000 or more, that July document had also revealed that the remarkable figure of 988 trusts had made payments of £100,000 or more.

So, again, why the specificity?

It might be thought, perhaps, that these 12 represented trusts which had newly entered into these high pay categories, having not been bothered by the DfE before. After all, it has made much of having written to 212 trusts about the issue last year, on the basis of previous years’ accounts, even though only a quarter had since reduced senior remuneration.

But no, this new list features 10 trusts which have been written to before, alongside two which haven’t. So it’s all a bit mysterious.

The trusts themselves

The presence of one trust on the list, among the two receiving a letter for the first time, might make for some interesting conversations behind the scenes at the academy chain which was founded by Lord Agnew, the current academies minister.

The highest-paid person at Burnt Mill Academy Trust (BMAT) was Helena Mills, its chief executive. She received £140-£145,000 last year, plus £20-£25,000 in employers’ pension contributions, the salary element being an increase of 0 to seven per cent on the previous year’s £135-£140,000.

But, with the remuneration still coming in at below £150,000, presumably this chain, based in Harlow in Essex, only made the list because it had, for the first time, more than one person on £100k-plus. For, in 2017-18, two people were each paid £100-£110,000.

Yet Mills also serves as a director at the Norwich-based Inspiration Trust, which of course was set up by Agnew, where he and his wife Lady Clare were, until February, among the controlling “members”.

By the way, Inspiration itself had four people on £100,000 last year, so can be included in the super-lengthy list of trusts which mysteriously have not been written to this time around.

BMAT also lists as one of its trustees, also by the way, Jo Coton, the chief executive of NET Academies Trust which is still hoping, very controversially, to take over Waltham Holy Cross Primary School, not far from Harlow in Waltham Abbey.

The other trust which was first written to this month was the seven-school Xavier Catholic Education Trust, in Chertsey in Surrey.

However, it is not clear from this trust’s accounts why it was written to, given the DfE’s stated criteria, as the 2017-18 financial document states that it had only one person on £100k-plus, with this highest-remunerated individual paid £130-£140,000.

It is possible, perhaps, that the DfE’s criteria define £100k-plus as including pensions payments, in which case the second-highest-paid person in this chain might scrape in, given that their salary was £90-£100k. But, given the number of chains with multiple people paid more than this (see above), again it seems surprising this organisation was targeted.

Of the other 10 organisations written to, one was frequently featured by this website last year. The Wellsway Multi-Academy Trust, based in Bristol, was the subject of our investigation – followed up by the Bath Chronicle -  over claims that it had been operating an “unregistered” alternative provision centre for years.

This chain saw Andrea Arlidge, its CEO, paid £140-£145,000 plus £20-£25,000 in 2017-18 – weirdly, the figures declared were exactly the same as of those of Mills, and Arlidge’s increase as reported was also the same as Mills’s, at 0 to 7 per cent from £135-£140,000. It had one other person paid above £100k, this time on £130-£135,000.

I have not had a chance to go through the accounts of the other nine organisations singled out on this occasion. But, without further information, it does seem a rather idiosyncratic choice of targets. Nowhere on this latest list, for example, was England’s third-largest chain, the Harris Federation. In 2017-18, it had four people in the top-10 highest-paid academy employees in England in 2017-18, while it paid 31 people at least £100,000 that year.  

Milner had been careful to say, at the start of her letters as released by the DfE, that there had been only a “very small number of academy trusts” who were either paying at least one person £150k-plus, or several people £100k-plus.

But there must surely be question marks over whether 146 trusts – or four per cent of the total on the DfE’s own statistics – constitutes a “very small number”, while nearly 1,000 trusts paying £100k or more suggests the possibility of many with multiple £100k-plus payments.

For all that many will welcome the DfE at least paying some attention to the issue of executive pay, given the constraints on school budgets, this whole process seems quite scattergun, and, the data would suggest, not very effective.