Academy trust Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operation Officer and Chief Financial Officer salaries should be capped according to pupil numbers, say teachers from NASUWT – The Teachers’ Union.
Following last year’s Where’s all the Money Gone? report – which highlighted millions of pounds lost to education every year through profiteering – delegates at NASUWT’s 2026 Annual Conference discussed measures to bring that money back into the education system.
NASUWT remains concerned that:
- Academy CEOs and leaders continue to earn six figure salaries while teachers’ pay shrinks in real terms, teachers and school staff face increasing levels of redundancy, and some teachers report spending their own money on food and resources for pupils;
- 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 – while academies are spending less per pupil on teaching and less on education support staff than their local authority maintained counterparts;
- Academy finances are managed in increasingly opaque ways with negative outcomes for staff and pupils. One NASUWT member says: “Our multi academy trust are slowly but surely taking our staffing and resources away. When support staff leave we are not being allowed to replace them, despite being understaffed. It is unsafe and unfair on all children involved.”
- In the recent Schools White Paper, the government suggested that all schools would be required in future to join an academy trust.
“Teachers are outraged that those at the top of many academy trusts are paying themselves very well indeed, while front line staff in schools lose their jobs and teacher workload increases. It is a scandalous situation but nothing serious is being done to address it.
“The Department for Education continues to ask schools to find efficiencies while it refuses to fully fund a basic teachers’ pay award or provide adequate investment in schools. Somehow, it cannot bring itself to say the truth out loud: only a radical overhaul of our education funding model can prevent pupils and teachers losing out while individuals and private companies profit.
“We have academy trust CEOs making upwards of £250,000 a year – significantly more than the Prime Minister – while presiding over trusts failing so heinously that we are stepping in to protect teachers and pupils through industrial action. Some sit atop ‘empty’ academy trusts, claiming large salaries while managing relatively low numbers of pupils.
“We have private companies sucking millions away from children while they profit through supply agencies, independent SEND provision, and procurement.
“NASUWT is calling for bold action to solve an urgent problem. We need to see salary caps for academy leaders in relation to their pupil numbers, alongside a cap on consultancy spending. We need an end to the use of profiteering supply and employment agencies. We need education procurement to come back under public management. And vitally, academy trusts must be obligated to publish itemised spending every year.
“If the government wants efficiencies, we’ve found efficiencies. Let’s have true scrutiny for the bad actors profiting from children’s education, and fair, proportionate salaries for trust leaders who spend more time in offices than they do in classrooms.”
