The government is working on identifying a list of multi-academy trusts about whom it has concerns over high levels of chief executive pay, it has emerged today.
The chief executive of the Education and Skills Funding Agency, David Withey, made the comments at the Schools and Academies Show.
The agency has previously attempted to crack down on top-level senior pay in multi-academy trusts by writing to trusts to question board decisions to award larger six-figure salaries.
Speaking at the show in Birmingham, Mr Withey said: “The general push towards wanting to make sure that funding is being used effectively across the system will absolutely continue.”
On the question of whether ESFA will look to challenge trusts on excessive pay, he added: “I think part of the challenge across a system that has many, many trusts is to get to a methodology to make sure we are identifying the ones that we do really need to be concerned about.
“And that is the work we’re doing at the moment. We are trying to make sure we can get to a list we can stand behind.”
From 2017, ESFA began challenging academy trusts on senior staff pay decisions.
Eileen Milner, who was then ESFA chief executive, wrote to trusts with an executive salary above £150,000, or multiple salaries between £100,000 and £150,000, and asked for the “rationale for setting these levels of salaries”.
It emerged in 2020 that less than half of academy trusts challenged by the government about high pay had given written agreements to reduce salaries.
ESFA’s annual report reveals that more than 105 trusts were written to in 2019-20 as part of “a high-pay challenge process” in order to “increase the level of transparency and achieve appropriate use of public funds”.
It said that 42 trusts from the 105 trusts written to have given a written commitment to reduce the salaries identified through the high-pay exercise.
Letters challenging trusts have not been issued in the past two years. But Mr Withey has now indicated that ESFA is working on identifying a list of trusts of concern.
Mr Withey became chief executive of the ESFA three months ago.
