Two academy trusts overseeing schools across Stoke-on-Trent have been ordered to justify the bumper pay packets of their top executives.

Education minister Lord Agnew has written to Alpha Academies Trust and Inspirational Learning Academies Trust as part of a blitz on ‘excessive’ salaries.

Now he is calling for reassurances they are not ‘diverting financial resources that could be more effectively deployed on the front line’ of children’s education.

Alpha – which runs Bentilee’s Discovery Academy and Maple Court Academy and Sneyd Green’s The Excel Academy – pays its CEO Sarah Robinson between £150,000 and £155,000-a-year.

The former Stoke-on-Trent College principal currently oversees five academies, along with a federation that covers four other schools. Alpha hopes to expand its stable to become a ‘regional’ academy chain, eventually educating more than 10,000 pupils.

Discovery Academy, left, and Newstead Primary Academy
Discovery Academy, left, and Newstead Primary Academy

Kate Townshend, chairman of its board of trustees, today defended the CEO wages. She said: “The role was advertised nationally with a salary that was benchmarked with similar trusts, taking into account the trust’s context and growth profile.

“The salary offered was appropriate to the role and experience and expertise of the post-holder.”

The exact salary of Helen Stocking, the top officer and executive headteacher at Inspirational Learning Academies Trust, has not been disclosed. Financial accounts just refer to it as being above £100,000.

Mrs Stocking helped turn Newstead Primary Academy into one of the most successful and rapidly growing schools in the city. After earning an ‘outstanding’ Ofsted grade, Newstead founded the trust and now sponsors Whitfield Valley Primary Academy, in Fegg Hayes , and Norton-Le-Moors Primary Academy.

Whitfield Valley Primary Academy
Whitfield Valley Primary Academy

The trust has yet to respond to StokeonTrentLive's request for a comment. 

These mini-academy chains are among 28 trusts to be singled out nationally. The criteria was based on size, standards and financial health. 

They have been asked to provide details about the pay of executives who earn more than £150,000 and those earning £100,000 if two or more people in a school are on six-figure salaries.

Lord Agnew said: “The best academies place freedom in the hands of school leaders. But with that autonomy comes greater accountability and transparency, which is exactly why I am insistent that the salaries of their executives are justifiable.

“And just because we are advocates of the academies programme, doesn’t mean we won’t call out a trust where we believe they are not acting responsibly.”

Maple Court Academy
Maple Court Academy

Nationally, less than four per cent of academy chains have two or more employees earning salaries in excess of £100,000.

The wage packets of academy bosses has come under greater scrutiny as schools grapple with ever tighter budgets. Classroom teachers are facing pay increases capped at just two per cent next year and many schools are having to cut staff to balance their books.

One of Alpha’s schools – Stoke Studio College for Construction and Building Excellence - ran up a £235,723 deficit last year. It has since closed due to low student numbers.

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