CHIEF Inspector of Schools Michael Wilshaw has criticised the heads of some academy chains for being paid vast salaries, up to £225,000 a year, while their pupils are left to get poor results.
His concerns are written in a hard-hitting letter to the Tory education secretary Nicky Morgan. Wilshaw was responding to an Ofsted inspection which examined seven multi-academy trusts (MATs) and found:
• Poor progress and attainment
• Not enough being done to improve behaviour or attendance
• Insufficient scrutiny of teaching quality and its impact on pupils’ progress
• Trusts not overseeing all their academies well
• A lack of urgency to tackle weak leadership
• Insufficient challenge from governors.
Hank Roberts, past president of teachers’ union ATL, told News Line yesterday: ‘If even Wilshaw is criticising this government’s so-called flagship policy, then you have got to know that this blatant fragmentation, privatisation and destruction of state education has got to be reversed. All academies and free schools must be handed back to local authority control.’
Wilshaw said in the letter: ‘Given these worrying findings about the performance of disadvantaged pupils and the lack of leadership capacity and strategic oversight by trustees, salary levels for the chief executives of some of these Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) do not appear to be commensurate with the level of performance of their trusts or constituent academies.
‘The average pay of the chief executives in these seven trusts is higher than the prime minister’s salary, with one chief executive’s salary reaching £225,000. This poor use of public money is compounded by some trusts holding very large cash reserves that are not being spent on raising standards.
‘For example, at the end of August 2015, these seven trusts had total cash in the bank of £111m. Furthermore, some of these trusts are spending money on expensive consultants or advisers to compensate for deficits in leadership. Put together, these seven trusts spent at least £8.5m on education consultancy in 2014-15 alone.’
Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: ‘The Prime Minister has said that he would like to “make local authorities running schools a thing of the past”. This is clearly a mistake.
‘Removing schools from the support offered by Local Authorities is evidently not the best way forward and is failing pupils and parents.’
