The local authority where eight academy trust chief executives are paid more than the Prime Minister

Union branch secretary, who carried out the research, said “the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of MAT executives” was undermining the principle of public education.

 

A union leader has launched a passionate critique of multi-academy trust leadership pay, after releasing data which showed that eight of the 31 trusts operating in his area paid their chief executives more than the-then Prime Minister last year.

And the leaders of 10 of the 31 chains, running schools in North Yorkshire, received pay rises of more than 10 per cent in 2023-24, the analysis by the National Education Union’s Gary McVeigh-Kaye shows.

Meanwhile, separate analysis performed by Education Uncovered has shown that, as of 2023-24, North Yorkshire local authority still oversaw schools with more pupils in them than did any individual academy trust operating in the county.

However, nine multi-academy trust leaders were paid more than the council’s director of children and young people’s services. The findings encapsulate how the English education system appears to be paying much more for executives overseeing its schools than was ever the case under the local authority set-up.

Mr McVeigh-Kaye said the findings showed that “austerity for classrooms” was coexisting with “opulence at the top,” in that executive pay was undermining the notion of education as a public good.

The Confederation of School Trusts has defended executive pay rises as not advancing excessively this year, stating that the median increase for a trust leader was four per cent in 2025. However, this still left median CEO pay in the sector sitting at £150,000, to run, on average, organisations slightly larger than a single secondary school.