“Eye-watering salaries” paid to academy trust bosses are “obscene” and must be stopped, the incoming president of the NASUWT teaching union warns today.

In his speech to the union’s annual conference, Phil Kemp will call for public money to be protected from the worst excesses of a deregulated education system, which he likens to the “Wild West”.

He will say: “The snouts have to come out of the trough.”

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Mr Kemp, 57, who leads an alternative-provision unit in North Tyneside, will call for a national pay scale for all teachers and leaders to be reintroduced as soon as possible and believes legislation needs to be introduced to make sure employers stick to it.

Addressing NASUWT members at the virtual conference, he will say schools in England are becoming increasingly removed from any kind of democratic accountability.

He will say: “Education is, too often, in the hands of a small group of unaccountable CEOs of national and regional multi-academy trusts, operating outside of any kind of democratic control. The concept of giving freedoms to teachers and headteachers translates - in reality - to giving freedom to this small group of CEOs.”

Academy trust chiefs ‘paid obscene amounts of money’

Speaking to Tes ahead of delivering his speech, he said: “You come to the educational freedoms [regarding teacher pay, but]…the only freedom that I see as being effectively applied has been the ability to pay obscene amounts of money to CEOs of multi-academy trusts.”

Mr Kemp is profiled in next week’s Tes magazine, in which he says his proudest achievement is, during the past 10 years, helping more a thousand key stage 4 students at risk of exclusions to gain “far more than what they would have done” in mainstream schools.

He will say today that the resilience of the teaching profession “has shone through” during the Covid pandemic, and that teachers have quickly adapted to a digital age whilst keeping schools open to varying degrees.

He will say: “The profession has rallied round and gone way beyond what would normally be expected - quite rightly, in this unprecedented national crisis - teachers have done their very best and done it brilliantly.”

But he will also warn of “corrupt or nepotistic practices” in the schools system.

He will say: “So many salaries, paid for from the public purse, rising over the £200,000 mark, and some well-publicised, almost reaching half a million pounds.

“The national pay scale for all those in education for teachers and all school leaders needs to be reintroduced as soon as possible, and measures put in place to ensure all employers in education adhere to it.

“The snouts have to come out of the trough and the public purse protected from those who will take advantage of the increasing deregulation of our education system. Those taking these huge salaries should hang their heads in shame.”

The Department for Education has been contacted for comment.