Named: The 92 academy trusts with multiple staff on £100k+

Ninety-two academy trusts with multiple staff on £100,000 to £150,000 a year have been named by the government.

Data obtained exclusively by Schools Week shows the majority of trusts with multiple employees on this kind of salary are small. In fact, of the 92 trusts named today, 56 have fewer than 10 schools, and 11 have just one each.

However, the list also includes 19 trusts with 20 or more schools on their rosters. These include some of England’s largest academy chains, such as the Academies Enterprise Trust, Reach2, United Learning, Oasis, Delta, TKAT, Harris and Ark.

Earlier this month, Eileen Milner, the head of the Education and Skills Funding Agency, wrote to 43 of the 92 trusts with multiple staff in that pay bracket, asking them to justify the salaries.

The other 49 trusts were not targeted because they had already received letters asking them to justify executive pay as part of earlier government interventions.

In December last year, the agency wrote to the trustees of academy trusts with just one school that had staff earning more than £150,000 a year to ask for justification of the salaries.

And in February, Milner wrote to 87 multi-academy trusts with staff paid more than £150,000 a year, asking for similar justification.

The revelation comes on the back of a Schools Week investigation which showed that some of the best paid chief executives in the country only run two or three schools.

School funding chiefs and academy trust bosses have been under increasing pressure to crack down on excessive executive pay following a public backlash over rising academy CEO pay in recent years.

The full list of 97 academy trusts is below. Those which received the latest letter from Milner are shown in bold.

* Trust now closed