The academy chain where the CEO makes nearly half a million—and teachers recruited from Jamaica get under £30k

Academies were meant to ensure greater investments in pupils, curricula and teachers. But in many, the most direct beneficiaries have been the senior leaders.

Academies - schools that are funded by the government but are run by not-for-profit “trusts” - are perhaps a somewhat lesser-known product of the nineties, precisely because they now seem so ubiquitous. The idea was to insulate schools from local authority pressures and red tape, while at the same time allowing them to raise additional funds elsewhere. …