Independent special schools

Of the £11 billion of the spending on SEND, £2.4 billion is spent on independent SEND education. Figures show that SEND spending on independent education has risen overall from £1.5 billion in 2020/21 to £2.4 billion in 2023/24.

Pupil numbers with SEND showed that from 2015/16 to 2023/24, the number of pupils in independent special schools has increased from 12,477 to 27,354.

Luke Sibieta, research fellow at the IFS, said they almost entirely reflect greater use of independent special schools, where places are ‘very high cost at £61,500 on average per year compared with the state-funded sector of £23,900.’

The largest increase at local authority level was in Calderdale, where spending rose a massive 477% in four years, from £699,409 in 2020/21 to £4,035,607 in 2023/24. [11]

Indefensible profiteering

We need to refocus on education spending to support frontline delivery. There is a significant amount of public money that is being used by state-funded schools to procure services from providers who are working on a for-profit basis.

There has been a large increase in the number of companies backed by private equity investors, including a Middle East sovereign wealth fund running private SEND schools that have made millions in profits amid a state capacity crisis.

There were 712 independent schools and non-maintained special schools (NMSS) in 2022/23, up from 547 in 2018/19.

One analysis estimates some companies are making tens of millions of pounds in profit, with one director paid £1.1 million last year. Some of these companies are also registered in tax havens.

Councils spent an average of £52,000 per pupil on independent special school places for 2015/16 [12], almost double the £10,000-£30,000 per pupil annual cost of a SEND pupil attending a state-funded school place.

There are countless examples to choose from, but one is Bury Council, which, in January 2024, said its specialist provisions ‘are full’, meaning ‘we have been forced to place significant numbers’ in the independent sector. Bury Council’s spending has increased from £5.3 million in 2018/19 to £10.6 million in 2022/23.

Who are the firms making millions?

Anne Longfield, former Children’s Commissioner, said these ‘eye-watering levels of profit’ are ‘indefensible, in my view. It’s taking money out of our statutory services at an alarming rate.’

Exam board/awarding bodies

The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) is by far and away the biggest awarding body in England. As a consequence of being a registered charity and having the sole function of being an awarding body for the provision of qualifications, much more detailed information is available for AQA than the three other exam bodies.

Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations (OCR) is run by Cambridge University Press and Assessment, which reported revenues of over £1bn in 2023/24, with an operating profit of over £200m.

While this body has other revenue-generating activities (the Cambridge Dictionary, Cambridge International Assessments and so on), some of this revenue and surplus does derive from its awarding body operations in the UK.

It is, however, difficult to disaggregate precise levels of revenue from awarding body functions from their published accounts.

While AQA, OCR and Eduqas, three of the big four general qualifications providers in England, invest their surpluses into the education system in line with their charitable objects, NASUWT is clear that public money does not need to be filtered through a non-state body in order to support the provision of public education.

The fourth awarding body is Pearson, which is absolutely an upfront profit-seeking corporation. It made operating profits of £493m in 2023, up 53% on the previous year.

It has lots of different elements to its business, but its assessment and qualifications division is its largest. It grew by 8% in 2023. Not all of this assessment and qualifications revenue comes from state-funded schools and colleges in England.

Pearson also claims to pursue worthwhile educational initiatives, but it used a large proportion of its profits to pay a 22p dividend on shares in 2023.

NASUWT’s longstanding position on awarding bodies is that the provision of qualifications is a core function of the state and, as such, it should be undertaken by a public sector body.

This is the position in Scotland with the Scottish Qualification Authority (SQA) and in Northern Ireland with Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA).

The overwhelming number of candidates for the qualifications taught by our members come from state-funded schools. The revenues they generate are of interest to us and the public.

A more detailed look at the AQA charity accounts and at the number of people on top salaries shows that charity begins at home. [13]

AQA have substantial long-term investments and reserves detailed in Table 1 below.

The number of employees at AQA earning £60,000 or more has more than doubled between 2022 (98) and 2023 (200). Using the midpoint of each salary range shows that the wage bill has also more than doubled to over £16 million (Table 2).

It is clear that at AQA, not only have the number of employees paid more than £60,000 a year more than doubled (from 98 to 200), but the average wage bill has also more than doubled, from just less than £8 million to over £16 million.

Consultancy spending in academy trusts

Academy trust spending on consultants has almost doubled in the past five years to £412 million, with spending on non-educational consultants reaching almost £70 million. (Table 3 and Graph 1).

Supply agencies and umbrella companies

The DfE-commissioned research published on 27 September 2024 found the average daily cost of supply teachers was £218 for primary schools, £291 for secondary schools and £270 for special schools.

However, the average pay rate reported by the supply teachers surveyed was £136 for primary, £150 for secondary and £144 for special schools. [14]

Three-quarters of supply teachers worked through agencies in 2021, rising to 89% in 2022.

A total of 3.2 million teaching days were missed because of sickness in 2022, up by 56% from 2 million pre-Covid, and more teachers are quitting the profession, leaving schools struggling to staff their classrooms.

Teacher supply agencies are making millions of pounds while supply teachers are stuck on ‘stagnating’ pay rates and ‘treated like second-class citizens’. [15]

Crown Commercial Services (CCS), the Government’s procurement website, says ‘it’s important to pay attention to the agency mark-up rate when sourcing temporary staff through agencies as it can impact how much your workers get paid.’

The average mark-up is 38%.

Analysis of the eight leading supply agencies’ most recent accounts suggests that the combined turnover was up by 39% on the previous year (£436.6 million).

An analysis of the annual accounts shows the country’s seven largest agencies recording £68.4 million in gross profit.

Smile Education is offering a new regional recruitment consultant ‘uncapped commission’, with ‘top billers earning £100k+’. The advert also stated that employees also have a paid-for holiday abroad together once a year. [16]

Tradewind Recruitment posted £11.3 million, Teaching Personnel posted a 26% increase in its turnover with a gross profit of £21.9 million, and Protocol Education, which had a £2.6 million loss in November 2020, rose to a £6 million profit in November 2021.

New analysis of government data suggests schools spent £974 million on supply teachers from agencies in 2021/22, up 18% on the £825 million in 2016/17.

With 75% of supply teachers working for agencies and considering the CCS average mark-up of 38%, almost £300 million of public money is gross profit for these agencies.

Schools spent more than £1.2 billion on supply teachers in 2022/23, with agencies estimated to have taken over £300 million in fees.

With data from the TaxPayers’ Alliance showing that nearly 14,000 teachers called in sick daily in 2023/24, the reliance on private firms has soared, as 93% of state school vacancies are now being filled through recruitment agencies.

The investigation highlighted two supply teacher agencies that were alleged to be ‘cashing in’ on the state schools staffing crisis, including Just Teachers and Zest Education. Both firms were seen rewarding some of their workers with trips to Spain. [17]

The Government must intervene and ensure every pound of public money delivers best value.

Footnotes
[11] https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/specialist-sector/send-plans-will-fail-stop-private-school-costs-soaring (£)
[12] https://schoolsweek.co.uk/how-investors-are-making-millions-from-the-bankrupt-send-system
[13] https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/charity-search/-/charity-details/3951890/accounts-and-annual-returns
[14] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/use-of-supply-teachers-in-schools
[15] https://schoolsweek.co.uk/supply-teachers-second-class-citizens-as-pay-stagnates
[16] https://schoolsweek.co.uk/supply-teacher-deregulation-graduate-teaching-recruitment
[17] https://www.staffingindustry.com/news/global-daily-news/uk-staffing-firms-accused-of-excessive-profits-in-supplying-schools

Chief executive officers and trustees of academy trusts

The School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) sets out a clear and transparent process for setting headteacher pay, which is determined by a combination of factors, including school size, location, and the headteacher’s experience and responsibilities.

The highest paid headteacher salary is for Inner London was £132,352 in August 2024.

Temporary additional payments, up to a maximum of 25%, are possible for additional duties outside their normal job description, for example executive headship of more than one school.

Since the first academies opened, almost 25 years ago, there has been no comparable pay-setting process for the pay of central team members in academy trusts, including CEOs.

In 2018, the Public Accounts Committee found, ‘Unjustifiably high salaries use public money that could be better spent on improving children’s education and supporting frontline teaching staff.’ [18]

The Campaign for State Education (CASE) research clearly evidences that higher management pay in the academies sector has been accompanied by lower spending on teaching and learning within classrooms. [19]

The Campaign found that:

• Spending in the academies sector is lower, at the classroom level, than in local authority maintained schools. Academies are spending less per pupil on teaching and less on education support staff than their local authority maintained counterparts.

• Classroom teachers within the local authority maintained sector are paid more, on average, within both primary and secondary schools than are their counterparts from the academies sector. Within the academies sector, teachers working within ‘sponsored academies’ - generally more challenging schools - were lower paid than that seen in academies as a whole.

• Teachers in academies, and in sponsored academies in particular, tend to be younger - and therefore less expensive - than their counterparts in the local authority maintained sector.

• The proportion of teachers working in academies, and sponsored academies in particular, without qualified teacher status is considerably higher than it is in local authority maintained schools: the rate within sponsored primary academies is double that of local authority primaries, while it is 55 % higher in sponsored secondary academies, compared to local authority secondaries.

• Some of the largest academy trusts have very high teacher turnover rates: one trust saw nearly a third of its teachers leave the school at which they were working during 2021/22, with nearly one in five at this trust leaving state-funded teaching in England altogether that year. If the largest trusts, and the academies sector as a whole, had teacher turnover rates at the same level as that seen in the local authority maintained sector, many more teachers would be retained in state-funded schooling in England than is currently the case.

• Taken together, the findings suggest a relatively low level of spending at the classroom level within the academies sector and within sponsored academies in particular. The latter means that a comparatively sparsely staffed, less well-paid and young classroom workforce is taking on some of the more challenging roles within education in England.

In 2015/16, 101 academy trusts remunerated at least one trustee over £150,000. It is now 775 in 2022/23, almost eight times as many as 2015/16. In 2016/17, 16 academy trusts paid over £200,000. In 2022/23, this had risen to 99, more than six times the 2016/17 figure.

The highest paid leadership salary for 2022/23, as set out in the STPCD (Inner London), was £131,353 (plus up to an extra 25%).

The UK Prime Minister’s salary for 2023/24 was £172,153, almost £60,000 less than the top 31 paid CEOs of academy trusts in the table above.

Top academy trust CEO pay and executive directors of education in local authorities’ pay - per-school comparisons

The most comparable role in local authorities to that of an academy trust CEO is that of the Executive Director of Education.

For the past 17 years, the TaxPayers’ Alliance has produced a report entitled Town Hall Rich List. The figures used are from their 2025 report. [22]

A CEO of an academy trust leads a multi-academy trust (MAT), focusing on the education and success of all schools within the trust, while an Executive Director of Children’s Service provides strategic leadership for children’s services across a local authority encompassing various aspects beyond education.

It is clear that regardless of the number of schools in the 31 top paid CEOs, their pay expressed as a ratio of the school in the trust is many times more than the equivalent figure for LA Executive Directors of Children’s Service.

Specific example of academy excess

• At Graveney Trust - G Stapleton - £97,500 salary plus £27,500 medical benefits. [23]

• Carlton Academy Trust registered the largest increase of £65,000, as Adrian Kneeshaw’s pay rose to at least £260,000. [24]

• At Flagship Learning Trust, the only standalone trust, Wright Robinson College in Manchester, in the top 31 of pay pots, executive headteacher Martin Haworth - who moved into the role in 2024, having long been its headteacher - earned at least £275,000 plus TPS pension contributions (circa £79,000), making a total package of £354,000, which is £153.12 per pupil. [25]

• Simon Beamish, Leigh Academies Trust leader, received a rise of 15%, as his pay jumped to at least £350,000. [26]

• At the New Vision Trust in London, Chief Executive Shahed Ahmed saw his pay rise by 30% to at least £260,000 and received at least £50,000 of this as ‘salary in lieu of pension contributions.’ [27]

• The biggest rise last year was seen at the Danes Educational Trust near Watford, where CEO Dr Josephine Valentine went from earning between £115,000 and £120,000 to at least £180,000. [28]

Other examples of academy trusts’ use of public money

The academy consolidated accounts for 2022/23 show an employee at an unnamed trust was handed between £200,000 to £250,000 as part of an ‘agreed’ exit package. Two others received a sum of between £100,000 and £150,000 following compulsory redundancies. [29]

Outwood Grange Academies Trust (OGAT) paid £235,823 for an event in February 2025 at the First Direct Arena in Leeds at which more than 4,000 of its staff and governors attended for a day that the trust described as both a celebration of its 15 years as an organisation and embracing professional development, though teacher sources were scathing about the benefits. [30]

Eko Trust (East London) worked with PLMR, the well-known communications company, to devise a plan to ‘support a smooth transfer’ of the two primaries in Brighton and Hove with the schools eventually having to claim the money back from the government. The public relations firm’s £180-an-hour charge to persuade a sceptical public to back the takeover of two local authority primary schools by a prominent multi-academy trust has been revealed through a freedom of information response. The total cost to the taxpayer for just one phase of this work was put at £10,000 plus VAT, though further work may have added to that bill. [32]

Bright Tribe

The Government was still paying the bill for one of England’s highest profile academy trust failures - four years after the last of its schools were transferred to other organisations.

Bright Tribe Trust, which was featured in a BBC Panorama documentary in 2018, was accused of misusing government funds and lost all its schools in 2018/19. It received £84,644 from the DfE in 2022/23.

Disclosures in DfE documents also reveal extra payments of £3 million over four years in relation to three free schools in England’s South West.

Meanwhile, its sister chain, Adventure Learning Academy Trust (ALAT), which lost its schools in 2019, received £34,960 in 2022/23, a recently released DfE report discloses.

An annexe to the DfE’s Academy Schools Sector report for 2022/23 sets out costs of policy failure which also include bills for some closed free schools - as well as a £1.9 million transfer to another academy trust which has featured extensively on Education Uncovered and which took the total extra taxpayer support to £3 million over four years for three free schools it took over. [32]

Footnotes
[18] House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts: Academy schools’ finances: Thirtieth Report of Session 2017-19 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmpubacc/760/760.pdf
[19] https://www.campaignforstateeducation.org.uk/_files/ugd/3dd219_7806a9356ef849258257ebb0010285ea.pdf
[20] https://schoolsweek.co.uk/revealed-the-academy-ceo-pay-premium
[21] Ibid.
[22] Town Hall Rich List 2025 - TaxPayers’ Alliance
[23] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07687897/filing-history
[24] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11963458/filing-history
[25] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11683714/filing-history
[26] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02336587/filing-history
[27] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11086415/filing-history
[28] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07671949/filing-history
[29] Academies consolidated annual report and accounts: 2022 to 2023 - GOV.UK https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/academies-consolidated-annual-report-and-accounts-2022-to-2023
[30] https://educationuncovered.co.uk/news/academy-trust-spends-235000-on-one-day-celebration-event-for-staff-and-governors
[31] Education Uncovered |News|Revealed: PR agency’s £180-an-hour charge for pro-academy spin
[32] Government still footing the bill for failed Bright Tribe chain and sister trust, four years after closure, DfE report reveals