The string of government reshuffles last year led to severance payments of almost £50,000 being paid to departing ministers from the Department for Education, new government accounts reveal.
Severance packages were paid to former education secretary Kit Malthouse and five other DfE ministers in 2022-23 following months of political turmoil that saw three prime ministers in as many months.
Michelle Donelan, who resigned as education secretary after less than two full days in post, waived her right to a severance package.
Today’s accounts show she was paid a salary of £9,048 in 2022-23 and received £2,000 in pension benefits. This was her time as education secretary and her previous role as a minister for further and higher education. The accounts do not make clear how much she was paid as education secretary.
Ms Donelan replaced Nadhim Zahawi in July last year, but then resigned two days later as pressure mounted on then prime minister Boris Johnson to resign.
Mr Zahawi and James Cleverly both left the post of education secretary last year to move into other Cabinet jobs and did not receive severance payments.
In the space of a year, there were five different education secretaries in post and another 11 people in ministerial roles at Sanctuary Buildings.
The new report shows Mr Malthouse received a severance package of £16,876 - around four times what he earned in salary. Former schools minister Robin Walker and former children’s minister Kelly Tolhurst received severance payments of £7,920, while Jonathan Gullis, Andrea Jenkyns and Alex Burghart, who were parliamentary under secretaries in the department, all received payments of £5,593.
Mr Walker said: “As is normal on resignation from the government I received severance pay reflecting my six years of service as a Minister. I was first appointed to be a junior Minister in July 2016 and became a Minister of State in July 2019 at the Northern Ireland Office before joining the Department for Education in September 2021, I resigned from the Government in July 2022.
“A number of colleagues who resigned around the same time returned to Government in the period that followed and of these a number voluntarily repaid any severance pay they were in receipt of. Had I done so I would have been happy to do so but I have not returned to Government.”
Baroness Barran, the academies minister, received no remuneration for her role, the DfE has said.
The figures are found in the department’s annual accounts for 2022-23, published today.
Here’s what you need to know about what the accounts tell us.
Lack of ‘understanding’ could be affecting take-up of NTP
The report published today said there may be “insufficient demand for or understanding of education recovery interventions in the sector”, which could be “causing a lack of engagement on recovery programmes and creating programme underspend” on the National Tutoring Programme.
It comes after senior strategic government adviser Tim Oates told Tes earlier this year that the government had acknowledged that catch-up efforts did not reach all those who needed it.
The accounts published today show that the NTP recovery premium budget was £524 million for 2022-23, of which £514 million was spent.
The DfE recently revealed that some of the money to fund the 2023-24 teacher and leader pay award of 6.5 per cent will come from NTP underspend.
Strikes: Keegan hoped ‘common sense’ would ‘prevail’
In the accounts published today, completed in March 2023 during the teacher strikes, education secretary Gillian Keegan said that she hoped that “common sense will soon prevail” and the industrial action would come to an end.
Since then, all of the four education unions currently in dispute with the government over pay - the NASUWT and NEU teaching unions, the NAHT school leaders’ union and the Association of School and College Leaders - have said they will recommend that members accept the 6.5 per cent pay award. This would bring an end to the industrial action.
The accounts also highlight how an “industrial relations division” was formed in November 2022 to “co-ordinate the department’s response to industrial action in the education sector”.
Its role included “liaising with other government departments and preparing ministers, COBRA and cross-government ministerial meetings on addressing strike impacts on the public”.
School buildings estate remains a ‘key risk’
Schools buildings remained as a “key risk” in the 2022-23 reporting year, with school buildings safety escalated to the Civil Service Board as a cross-governmental risk.
The report says that the risk of building collapse in the school estate resulting from structural safety issues (very likely) had remained stable this year while the department “carries out work to ensure all bodies responsible for the schools and college estate identify and manage any risks from RAAC [reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete] in their buildings”.
The report adds that this will include additional funding for capital measures needed to mitigate any immediate risks identified.
“At the time of publication there are no open schools or college buildings where we know of an imminent risk of harm,” it adds.
Last week, MPs called for the DfE to reveal how many schools have buildings containing RAAC and to explain how it plans to deal with asbestos across the school estate.
The DfE has issued a questionnaire to schools in order to identify those with RAAC.
