Academy trusts wasting millions of pounds on highly-paid managers

Multi-academy trusts, the government’s favoured structure for organising schools in England, are wasting millions of pounds on high salaries for their managers, new analysis reveals today.

The largest trusts are spending eight times more per pupil on salaries of £130,000 and above than are England’s largest local authorities, which oversee non-academy schools, my investigation for the Campaign for State Education has found. Yet there is no definitive evidence that the academies sector has provided higher quality to pupils as a result.

Analysis of the accounts of 561 multi-academy trusts, and accounts and freedom of information responses from England’s 10 largest local authorities (LAs), revealed huge disparities in spending on highly-paid administrators.

The 50 largest academy trusts had 167 people paid £130,000 or more, compared to only 24 within the 10 LAs – even though the two groupings had roughly the same number of pupils under their oversight.

Those 50 academy trusts had 26 people paid at least £200,000, compared to only two among the LAs, with a highest salary figure within the academies sector of £455-£460,000, compared to one of £202,000 among the 10 local authorities.