Academy chain seeks executive on almost Prime Ministerial salary – though they will not be leading the organisation

The Co-op Academies Trust is advertising for a new regional director on a salary of up to £169,000.

A multi-academy trust is advertising for a new executive to be paid almost as much as the Prime Minister – though the new recruit will not be leading the organisation.

The Co-op Academies Trust is seeking a new regional director on a salary of up to £169,000, which would also only by £10,000 less than that paid to the head of England’s largest local authority-though the latter oversees schools with 75 times more pupils.

The development seems to be another case study showing how the academies policy has inflated pay, at the top end, versus what happens via another way of organising schools: the local authority sector.

The Co-op trust said the salary of the new role had been “benchmarked against comparable positions within the sector,” though there was no mention of whether it had been compared to salaries in the local authority sector. Education Uncovered compared senior pay within this trust against that of a local authority of similar size, and found an eight-fold disparity in the numbers paid £140,000-plus.