Revealed: DfE academies supervisor saw her own salary as a trust chief executive benchmarked against the highest-paid people in the sector
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Mulberry Schools Trust used newspaper list of 20 highest-paid CEOs in England as comparator for its own leader’s salary, which then became one of the fastest-rising in England.
An academy trust presided over a huge increase in its chief executive’s salary and pensions after benchmarking her pay against the most well-remunerated people in the sector, Education Uncovered can reveal.
The Mulberry Schools Trust ratcheted up the total package of its chief executive, Vanessa Ogden, by at least £65,000 over two years after including a newspaper’s league table of the top-20 most well-remunerated academy leaders in England in its deliberations of how much she should receive.
Education Uncovered revealed last month how Dr Odgen, who has just taken over as the Department for Education’s regional director for London, previously had one of the fastest-rising salaries of any academy leader in recent years.
The leaders of England’s two biggest education unions have both told this website that the disclosure of how the increases were arrived at was “shocking.” One told me it was a symptom of a “broken” academy system, while the other said that current government attempts to get a grip on executive pay in education were “woefully inadequate,” calling for a national pay structure for academy CEOs.
The revelation of the trust benchmarking exercise which allowed these rises to happen, which has been provided to this website under Freedom of Information, seems to underscore how multi-academy trusts can be engaged in a race to the top on leadership pay, with increases often far outstripping those of rank-and-file staff.
Although this has often been claimed as an assumption for what might be happening behind the scenes, in terms of academy CEO pay increases, this disclosure shows how the packages of the most lavishly-rewarded leaders in the sector contributed to raising the remuneration of this one.
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By Warwick Mansell for EDUCATION UNCOVERED
Published: 11 May 2026
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And the revolving door keeps revolving at the DfE.
Wow - in a period when economic restraint should be paramount, this is shocking self interest reflecting a self serving system. When utilities were privatised in the 1990s there were many fat cat stories with many individuals in positions punching above their weight. One of the motivations is to retain staff but this CEO has moved on - presumably more money, influence and maybe a knighthood guaranteed. Luckily for the government, the general public are not interested but the sector should demonstrate some restraint. Pupils and teachers are short of resources. Many of these CEOs are still enjoying 6 week summer holidays and teacher pensions! They must be laughing all the way to the bank. Politically, the government would be wise to reduce these salaries and reduce taxes! Sometimes it pays to let the so called talent go.
Sadly, this tale is not at all surprising. The process of acadamisation in England has effectively been the privatisation of schooling following the Neo-liberal agenda of Thatcherism since the 1980s. The control of schools and esp. schools finances outside of local democratic control has led to the CEO wage spiral that we have seen in private industry (and privatised industries) in this time period. In the 1970s the average CEO pay was 20x the median workers - now this is more like 120x. Likewise HT pay was about double that of the median teacher and now can be many, many time more - and as you have reported many time more than more substantial roles in the LA sector.