Engagement with academy trusts about executive pay
A list of academy trusts that the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) contacted in November 2023 about executive pay.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
On 23 November 2023, Lindsey Henning, the Director of Schools Financial Support and Oversight, Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), wrote to chairs of trustees of 37 academy trusts about executive pay in their trust.
These trusts had the highest executive pay figure when compared with trusts of similar size and type. This exercise was based on data trusts submitted in their 2021 to 2022 academy accounts return (AAR).
Why we engaged these trusts
We have a duty to ensure that academy trusts, as autonomous bodies, uphold high standards of transparency and accountability. Compliance with the academy trust handbook (ATH) is a condition of every academy trust’s funding agreement.
To ensure academy trusts have robust processes for setting executive pay that comply with the requirements of the ATH 2023, we undertook sector engagement. Our approach aims to ensure the right level of sector support and guidance with regard to pay and benefits so that decisions about pay:
- represent good value for money
- are defensible relative to the public sector market
We wrote to these trusts to ask for evidence of how, when setting executive pay, the trust complied with conditions set out in the ATH 2023.
Identifying high executive pay
Trusts were grouped by:
- type - multi-academy trusts, single academy trusts and those with special and alternative provision
- pupil numbers
We did this to minimise bias toward any particular type of trust.
We then applied 2 markers for pay. These were being in the top 5% of highest paid executives:
- overall
- as a proportion of general annual grant (GAG) funding
Trusts were in scope of this activity if they met both markers.