Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that multi academy trust executives are paid appropriately; and what action was taken by the 37 trusts her Department issued with outlier pay challenge letters in October 2024.

The 37 academy trusts listed in the October 2024 publication on GOV.UK were engaged with on executive pay to ensure compliance with the Academy Trust Handbook.

The Academy Trust Handbook requires that:

• An academy trust’s board of trustees ensures its decisions, when setting levels of executive pay (including salary and any other benefits), follow a robust evidence-based process.
• Academy trusts’ decisions on pay must be a reasonable and defensible reflection of the individual’s role and responsibilities.
• No individual can be involved in deciding their remuneration.
• Academy trusts must be transparent on pay and publish the number of employees whose benefits exceed £100,000 on their websites in £10,000 bandings. Where employees are also trustees, this information must be disclosed in £5,000 bandings.

Following provision of evidence from the academy trusts, all 37 were found to be compliant with the Academy Trust Handbook.