Tag Archives: accountants

Highest paid staff in academies: one LA area

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Each year academies and MATs are required to publish their accounts. These accounts include a table showing the salary bands for staff paid more than £60,000. Each year, I track the changes for academies and MATs across one geographical area. Sadly, the table isn’t complete for 2025, as a small number of schools and MATs still have not seen their account for 2024/25 published at Companies House.

MAThighest salary band in annual accounts
 SALARIES 20242025difference
1£90,000£100,000£10,00011%
2£140,000£151,000£11,0008%
3£140,000£160,000£20,00014%
4£180,000£00%
5£260,000£270,000£10,0004%
6£110,000£120,000£10,0009%
7£90,000£00%
8£120,000£140,000£20,00017%
9£130,000£130,000£00%
10£170,000£250,000£80,00047%
11£90,000£100,000£10,00011%
12£150,000£170,000£20,00013%
13£90,000£110,000£20,00022%
14£120,000£120,000£00%
15£130,000£150,000£20,00015%
16£140,000£00%
17£160,000£190,000£30,00019%
18£120,000£00%
19£190,000£200,000£10,0005%
20£90,000£00%
21£120,000£00%
22£130,000£120,000-£10,000-8%
23£140,000£00%
24£140,000£150,000£10,0007%
25£190,000£210,000£20,00011%
26£150,000£160,000£10,0007%

In 2023/24 the bands for highest paid staff member in an academy or MAT in this group of academies ranged from £90-100,00 to £260,000-£270,000. In 2024/25 the range, so far, is from £100,000-£110,000 to £270,000-£280,000.

Ten of the 26 reporting bodies (there were 17 with details for both years) saw an increase of more than 10% in the band in which their highest earner was placed. This took at least six of the reporting bodies into a band above that of the salary of the Director of Children’s Services in the authority.

Of course, the salary does not reveal the number and size and complexity of schools within the MAT, not all of which are within the geographical area of the local authority where the schools studied are located. However, there does seem to be an element of the Wild West and Frontierland in general around the issue of salaries for senior leaders.

This lack of control over public spending by the DfE mirrors a long-standing refusal to grasp the nettle of what is an Executive Headteacher, and how should they be remunerated.

If the direction of travel, foreshadowed in the recent White Paper comes about, and all schools become academies, then the DfE will be directly responsible for all schools. If such a situation comes about, then there will need to be clear rules about how much freedom over the spending of public money should be allowed.

Regiments don’t bid up the pay of their colonels, and the salaries for most public sector jobs are not subject to the vagaries of the market: it’s time to look again at how senior staff in the school sector are paid.

Is it justifiable to pay Chief Executives of MATs more than Directors of Children’s Services? Should there be a book of some colour that Trustees of MATs should consult when deciding pay and conditions, and other employment matters. Or should the market remain the deciding factor in deciding the employment rights of the leaders of our state schools in England?

Fine the accountants

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Both stand-alone academies and Multi Academy Trusts use private sector accountants to audit their accounts.  Each year, a number of MATs and academies are tardy in publishing their accounts at Companies House, where anyone can view the school or MATs handling of public money.

In my experience, it is the same MATs and schools that keep everyone waiting each year and this delay prevents any useful analysis of how schools are using their funds in particular geographical areas.

As usual, I am still waiting to see the accounts for seven sets of accounts for the schools in the geographical area where I track all non-community schools. These missing accounts are mostly the accounts from the same set of schools that were slow in appearing last year and the year before.

I think it is high time that the DfE, now responsibly directly for the funding of academies after the closure of the EFSA, takes some action to ensure all accounts, save those where there are legitimate queries, are posted by the end of January each year. That’s five months after the end of the accounting year, and should provide sufficient time for all accounts to be prepared.

How to deal with those accountants that don’t file by the required date: fine them. The notion of fining for late delivery of documents is well known and accepted. After all, HMRC will happily fine anyone not delivering their tax return by the due date, so why not fine private sector accountants for not filing these accounts on time.

The consequences would be that either the fine was passed on to the school or MAT or the accountants declined to continue handling the accounts in future years. Either way, the fine should help to instal financial discipline in those schools in the non-community part of the state school sector that are either being ignoring or possibly even flaunted the deadlines at present.

With the recent White Paper once again raising the spectre of all schools becoming academies – one wonders how foundation Schools view that prospect – installing financial discipline from day one should be something the National Audit Office needs to confirm with the DfE is not just a nice thing to have, but a necessity. The NAO might well decide to qualify the DfE’s accounts if it cannot see the accounts for all directly funded state schools within the prescribed time frame.

In my next post, I will consider how salaries for the top earners in MATs within one area have changed between the 2024 and 2025 accounts. With secondary schools now regularly advertising their headship with a starting salary of more than £100,000, and some on even more than £150,000, it is important to know whether Chief Executives of MATs, and executive headteachers are now regularly earning more than the Directors’ of Children’s Service in local authorities.

I guess that they are also earning more than the civil servants that have the ultimate power over the school sector. One wonders what should be the multiple between the salary of the lowest full-time worker in a school and the headteacher? In many case, it cases the multiple is now more than a factor of ten, between the lowest and highest paid staff members in a school: is this too great a gap?