How Multi-Academy Trusts have diverted education funds into executive salaries

There was a good letter to the Guardian this week about one of the downsides of the rise of muilti-academy trusts.

Jonny Crawshaw, a Labour councillor from York, wrote:

A cursory look at the published accounts of the many multi‑academy trusts (Mats), which now control at least 80% of state secondary schools in England, shows an explosion in chief executive pay, with many new ancillary roles – chief finance officers, executive headteachers and trust performance directors – also adding to “central services” bills. 

Many of these roles didn’t exist a decade ago, yet they leach millions of pounds each year out of the classroom and into the bank balances of the disproportionately white, middle‑class men who fill them.

Take my home town of York as an example: where once the 63 state schools were maintained by a director of children’s services on circa £110,000 and an assistant director of education on circa £80,000, we now have six Mats whose focus is increasingly drawn outside the city boundaries. 

Together they now employ six CEOs on salaries ranging from at least £130,000 to more than £160,000, six CFOs and several executive heads, and sport a combined wage bill for “key management personnel” that exceeds £7m – money the former education authority could only dream of. 

Meanwhile, more than a third of the city’s schools remain under the local authority.

Crawshaw concluded that this and Mats' lack of public accountability are the "real scandals" that need to be addressed in education.

The photo here is of a York primary school. It's a Church of England school, so not part of any new-style Mat. I've chosen it because it was the first polling station where I served as a teller for the Liberal Party. This was in the city council elections of 1980 - our candidate, the late Julian Cummins, narrowly failed to win.