By Gavin Mackintosh-
Over 30% of academy trusts are reviewing CEO pay rates over their policies or commit to future salary cuts for bosses.
Jonathan Slater, The Department of Education’s permanent secretary-John Slater- confirmed today that of 213 trusts that received letters asking for justification of their bosses’ pay. Over 131 demonstrated “that their processes for setting executive salaries were compliant with the challenge set out in the 2017 academies financial handbook”.
Eleven trusts have been forced to commit to reducing their salaries in the future, and two were made “an immediate significant reduction in salaries following negotiations with the ESFA”. Another 43 trusts have committed to reviewing their pay policy and processes “to ensure that levels of pay accurately reflect the level of educational and financial challenge faced by the trust, and the responsibilities of the individual being paid”.
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Headteachers are closely being scrutinised following revelations about excessive pay incomes for all fat cats.Over 52 trusts have now been “taken out of scope” of the clampdown, either because they have already reduced executive salaries or because they have closed. Schools Week revealed the names of 50 of these trusts last year.
Ministers and school funding chiefs have written a series of letters to single and multi-academy trusts on the matter.
In a letter to the parliamentary public accounts committee, sent to fill in gaps in evidence provided by Slater during a hearing in November, the senior civil servant also corrected comments made by Eileen Milner, the head of the ESFA.
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“Eileen Milner said in the hearing that ‘between 2015-16 and 2016-17 about half those trusts ceased paying salaries at the level that came into scope’. In fact this is more like a quarter,” he said.
The letter did not name the trusts concerned.
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