Revealed: how DfE’s push to limit pay of leaders of large academy chains came to nothing

A government drive to limit steadily-climbing pay among leaders of major academy chains can be revealed today as having come to nothing, with the average remuneration of leaders of the largest chains having soared well beyond classroom staff rises.

During the years 2017 to 2020, ministers and Department for Education officials were making some effort to restrain salaries among academy leaders, which at this stage were already often well in advance of the roughly £150,000 a year paid to the Prime Minister.

In 2018, the-then Education Secretary, Damian Hinds, had criticised high chief executive pay, while Lord Agnew, academies minister at the time, told a committee of MPs that: “This is public money, and frankly if a MAT chief executive is being paid more than the prime minister, this should only be in circumstance and leadership.”

The Conservative peer had also said that pay rises for chief executives should not be in excess of those for teachers.

DfE officials were busy, in this period, writing to academy trusts which had either more than one person paid £100,000 a year or more, or at least one on £150,000 or more.