Aspirations Academies Trust Teacher Pay (2026/27)

What this page is and isn't

It matters to say this before anything else, because the shape of the evidence here is unusual and it would be dishonest to dress this page up as something it is not.

For a trust like Co-op Academies Trust or the Arthur Terry Learning Partnership we can read a published pay policy and tell you what every pay point, TLR band and progression rule is worth. For Aspirations we cannot. The trust publishes no teachers' pay policy, no appraisal or pay progression policy, no directed time policy and no union recognition agreement. We checked its own policies page directly; what it publishes is articles of association, the master funding agreement, a scheme of delegation, safeguarding, complaints, charging and remissions, whistleblowing, sexual harassment and modern slavery — plus the statutory trade union facility time reports. Nothing about what teachers are paid.

Nor is there a dispute to read the pay position out of. At several other trusts profiled on this site — Charter, St Ralph Sherwin, Arthur Terry — a union ballot, a strike and a settlement generated a detailed public record of the employment terms in question. We found nothing of the kind here. No NEU, NASUWT or UNISON ballot, no strike, no union statement, no reported grievance about pay or restructuring at this trust, despite repeated searching. That is an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence, and we are not going to read it either way.

What we do have is a well-documented and quite specific financial and executive-pay picture: audited figures in the DfE's own benchmarking data, a going concern warning in the trust's own board records, a named and costed savings programme, and two reported executive pay bands that sit in the top tier of the sector. That combination tells you something real about the budget environment your school is operating in and about how this trust has historically allocated money at the top. It does not tell you what M4 pays at Wykham Park. Read it as a page about the trust's financial and leadership-pay position, and treat everything about classroom pay as something you have to ask for in writing.

What Aspirations Academies Trust is

Aspirations Academies Trust is a mixed primary, secondary and post-16 trust founded in 2011, registered at Companies House as company number 07867577. Its own material describes 16 academies educating more than 9,000 young people from age 2 to 18, organised into three geographical districts. The DfE's Get Information About Schools register and the department's financial benchmarking tool both record 16 open academies.

The three districts, as the trust itself sets them out:

• West London (5 academies): Oak Hill Academy and Oriel Academy (primary), Park Academy West London, Rivers Academy West London and Space Studio West London (secondary and post-16). All sit in the London Borough of Hounslow.
• Banbury, Oxfordshire (4 academies): Dashwood Academy and Harriers Banbury Academy (primary), and The Futures Institute Banbury and Wykham Park Academy (secondary and post-16).
• South Coast, Dorset and Bournemouth (7 academies): Jewell Academy Bournemouth and Ocean Academy Poole (primary), Bovington Academy (primary), Livingstone Academy Bournemouth and Atlantic Academy Portland (all-through), Magna Academy Poole and Budmouth Academy Weymouth (secondary and post-16).

The trust also operates alternative provision and a post-16 offer, and its accounts attribute part of its cost pressure to "increased pressures from external alternative and special needs provisions" — a phrase worth noting, because AP and high-needs placement costs have become one of the largest uncontrolled budget lines in the sector.

Which pay area your school sits in

This is the single most financially significant thing about an Aspirations job, and it has nothing to do with any decision the trust makes.

The trust straddles two STPCD pay areas. Its five West London academies are in the London Borough of Hounslow, which is an Outer London authority for teachers' pay purposes. Its Oxfordshire and Dorset academies sit in the national (rest of England) area with no weighting at all. The gap between the two is larger than any trust-level differential offered anywhere in England — the handful of trusts that genuinely pay above scale do so by one to five and a half per cent, whereas Outer London weighting is worth considerably more than that at every point.

So a teacher moving between two schools in the same trust, doing the same job on the same pay point, can be more than £5,301 apart at the top of the main range. That is not a trust policy and it is not negotiable — it is the statutory geography. But it does mean you should never compare two Aspirations adverts without checking which district each school is in, and it means an internal move within the trust can involve a substantial pay change in either direction. Check the full national and London scales for every point, and model what any of them is worth after tax, National Insurance and pension with our take-home pay calculator.

The £486,000 swing and the going concern warning

On 9 March 2026 Schools Week reported that Aspirations had fallen into the red and would make big cuts. The numbers are checkable independently: the DfE's financial benchmarking and insights tool records, for the year September 2024 to August 2025, revenue reserves of minus £486,000 and an in-year balance of minus £1,491,000.

Read those two figures together, because they say different things. The £486,000 is the accumulated position: the trust has spent slightly more than it has ever received. The £1,491,000 is what happened in that one year, and it is three times larger — the trust burned through roughly £1,010,000 of accumulated surplus and then kept going. It is the rate of deterioration rather than the level that explains why a £3 million savings programme followed.

The trust's stated reserves policy is to hold £3.1 million, equating to 4 per cent of income — which implies a total income in the region of £77 million, and puts the actual position roughly £3.6 million below its own target rather than merely below zero.

The trust's own explanation, as reported, attributes the position to unfunded pay awards, falling pupil numbers at some schools, inflation, "unfavourable government policies" and increased pressure from external alternative and special needs provision. It also stated that it continues "to have strong cashflow and a healthy cash balance and are not seeking financial support from the department". That last clause is important and cuts in the trust's favour: unlike St Ralph Sherwin, which has drawn DfE cash-flow loans and sits under a second notice to improve, and unlike Arthur Terry, which drew down £3.5 million in government loans before being broken up, we found no DfE notice to improve and no government loan facility for Aspirations. On the sector's escalation ladder this trust is several rungs below both.

Where the £3 million of savings comes from

The savings programme is the part of this story that most directly affects staff, and Schools Week reported it in enough detail to set out strand by strand. All three figures are the trust's own.

The trust's public comment on the programme was: "Our priority remains providing an exceptional education for every pupil, and we are confident in the steps being taken to secure the trust's long-term stability."

It is worth being fair about the third strand. A trust that responds to a deficit by capping its own leadership pay is doing something many do not; the more common pattern documented across this site is that support staff terms move first because they are the terms a trust can change fastest. Aspirations putting £1.5 million — half the total programme — against senior structures is, on its face, the right order of priority. The question the next section raises is what the starting point was.

The executive pay contrast

Schools Week's March 2026 report set the savings programme directly against the trust's executive pay, and the figures are the reason this page exists.

Schools Week described Kenning's £275,000–£280,000 as the 10th highest chief executive pay in England. For context on what that tier looks like, the same publication's audit of 2024-25 accounts across 1,084 trusts, published on 16 April 2026, found an average chief executive salary of about £142,000, 88 trusts paying more than £200,000 — up from 64 the year before — and six leaders above £300,000, headed by the Harris Federation's Sir Dan Moynihan at £530,000 to £535,000. A trust of 16 schools paying close to £280,000 sits well above where trust size alone would put it. Our guide to academy trust CEO pay and the £174,000 threshold sets out the sector-wide picture, how the bands are disclosed and what the new approval regime actually does; this page sticks to what it means at this particular trust.

The second figure is the one that needs care, because it is a significant claim about named individuals, so it is worth setting out exactly how well evidenced it is. Paula Kenning is Steve Kenning's wife and is employed by the same trust as a deputy. Schools Week reported this directly in its March 2026 piece, giving her pay as £225,000 to £230,000. It is not a new or isolated report: Education Uncovered published an investigation in February 2018 headlined on the trust having paid £1.6 million in four years for the services of the married couple running it, recording at least £399,795 of combined pay and pension in 2016-17 alone and describing that as the fourth successive year of similar amounts. The arrangement has therefore been publicly reported, by more than one outlet, across more than eight years. We are satisfied it is accurate.

The reason this matters practically rather than just politically is the mechanism. A trust's central costs — of which executive pay is part — are funded by a top-slice taken from each academy's own budget allocation before the school sees it. Money spent centrally is money not spent in a classroom, and in a trust with a going concern caveat the headroom that funds discretionary TLRs, recruitment incentives and above-minimum starting points is exactly what disappears first. That is the connection between the figures above and your payslip, and it is a real one.

The Teslas — and how old that story is

You will find the Tesla story attached to this trust in several places, usually alongside the deficit, and it is accurate — but the dating is routinely got wrong, so it is worth pinning down.

Schools Week reported on 26 April 2024 that the trust had defended providing Teslas to central team staff. The specifics: around £87,000 spent on company cars between 2021 and 2023, with six central team members supplied Tesla Model 3 saloons on 2022 registrations, replacing four earlier Teslas and two VW Golfs. The Model 3 listed at the time at roughly £39,990 to £49,990. The trust's company car policy, as reported, supplies vehicles to staff who drive more than 20,000 business miles a year or to "employees at specified status levels".

The trust's defence was a cost one: a spokesperson said the decision was "based around the significant financial saving versus mileage claims from those employees", and that the recipients complete more than 25,000 business miles a year. It declined to say which staff received the cars, did not publish the claimed saving, and would not confirm whether the scheme had been approved by trustees — the report noting that only items of expenditure above £50,000 individually require that approval. The school finance specialist Micon Metcalfe, quoted in the piece, made the obvious point that policies like this need to be weighed against what she called the "Daily Mail test".

On the substance, the trust's argument is not absurd. Six people covering West London, Banbury and Dorset from a single central team genuinely will run large mileages, and HMRC-rate mileage claims on 25,000 business miles a year are expensive. Whether a leased Tesla Model 3 is the cheapest way to solve that is a question the trust could have settled by publishing the comparison it says it made, and chose not to.

What the base pay almost certainly is

Here is the honest position, stated as narrowly as the evidence allows.

We have no direct evidence about Aspirations' teacher pay structure. No published policy, no union account of one, no trade press report of a trust pay scale, and no advert we could verify as quoting a bespoke range. What we can say is what the default is, and why departing from it is unlikely.

• The overwhelming sector default is the STPCD. The large majority of academy trusts mirror the national pay ranges, points, TLR bands and SEN allowances, because recruiting against maintained schools on anything less is difficult and building a bespoke structure is expensive. Trusts that genuinely depart from it — United Learning with its own scale, Ark paying above it — say so loudly, because it is a recruitment asset. Aspirations says nothing, which is far more consistent with following the national framework than with beating it.
• A trust with a going concern caveat is not a trust paying above scale. Above-scale trust allowances cost money a deficit trust does not have. If anything, the financial position makes an above-scale position less likely, not more.
• From 2026 the STPCD ranges are becoming a statutory floor for academies anyway, which removes the downside risk even where a trust has never published a policy. See the section below.
• So: assume the national rate at the Banbury and Dorset schools, and the Outer London rate at the Hounslow schools, and treat anything better as something that has to be written into your offer letter before you believe it.

Two things we specifically cannot tell you, and that a published policy would settle: whether pay progression is automatic or performance-gated, and whether the trust matches your existing pay point when you join. Both are worth more over a career than a percentage on the headline rate, and both are exactly the sort of thing that a trust remodelling its staffing to save £1.4 million has an incentive to tighten. Ask for both in writing.

What's verified and what isn't

• Well evidenced: the £486,000 revenue reserves deficit and the £1,491,000 in-year balance for the year to 31 August 2025 — both directly checkable on the DfE's financial benchmarking tool under company number 07867577, and consistent with Schools Week's reporting.
• Well evidenced: the going concern wording — "a material uncertainty exists, which may cast doubt on the trust's ability to continue as a going concern" — reported by Schools Week on 9 March 2026 as the trust's own board records.
• Well evidenced: the three savings strands and their values (£1.4 million, £200,000 rising to £600,000, and £1.5 million), all reported as the trust's own figures in the same article.
• Well evidenced: the executive pay bands — £275,000–£280,000 for Steve Kenning and £225,000–£230,000 for Paula Kenning — and the fact that they are married and both employed by the trust. Reported by Schools Week in March 2026 and corroborated by Education Uncovered's separate investigation into the couple's pay, published in February 2018.
• Well evidenced: the company car spending — approximately £87,000 between 2021 and 2023, six central team staff, Tesla Model 3 saloons — reported by Schools Week on 26 April 2024, including the trust's own policy wording and its response.
• Well evidenced: the trust's size and composition — 16 academies across Hounslow, Oxfordshire and Dorset — from the trust's own academies list, Get Information About Schools and the DfE benchmarking tool.

• Not found: any published Aspirations teachers' pay policy, appraisal policy, pay progression policy, directed time policy or trade union recognition agreement. This is the central gap and the reason this page cannot tell you what the trust pays at each point.
• Not found: any union pay dispute, ballot, strike, grievance or public union statement involving this trust, from the NEU, NASUWT, UNISON or any other union. We searched specifically for one. Its absence is not proof that relations are good; it means nothing has been reported.
• Not found: any DfE notice to improve, financial notice to improve, or government loan facility for this trust. On the published record it is not under formal intervention.
• Attributed to Schools Week but not independently checkable: the specific ranking of Steve Kenning's pay as 10th highest in England. Schools Week stated it in its 9 March 2026 report; the published top-earner list in its own April 2026 audit does not run far enough down for us to verify the ordinal position ourselves. The pay band is solid; treat the exact rank as the publication's.
• Not known: how many posts the £1.4 million staffing remodelling will cost, which schools are affected, whether formal redundancy consultation has opened, or what stage the programme had reached by September 2026. No follow-up reporting was found.
• Not known: whether the company car scheme still operates, or what it costs now. The only reporting we found is from 2024 and covers 2021 to 2023.
• Not verified: anything about TLR values, SEN allowances, pay portability, directed time, PPA or workload at this trust. We have no evidence either way and are not going to infer any.

What changes under the 2026 Act, and the new executive pay rules

Two separate reforms land on this trust, and both point the same way.

The academy pay floor. The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 requires academies to have regard to the STPCD and to meet a statutory minimum pay floor set by reference to the STPCD pay ranges, and extends the School Teachers' Review Body's remit to academies. The timing is widely misreported. Section 59 and Schedule 3 commenced on 29 June 2026, which gives the Secretary of State the power to make a minimum remuneration order; academies are only actually required to pay the floor once that order is made, and the Department for Education has said that will be no earlier than September 2026. No order had been made at the time of writing. The September 2027 date often quoted alongside the Act belongs to a different provision — QTS becoming a requirement in academies. A government amendment during the bill's passage confirmed the floor is a floor, not a ceiling. Our guide to the academy pay floor sets out what the duty does and does not cover.

For a trust that publishes no pay policy, this is genuinely useful. It converts "we assume they follow the STPCD" into "they will be legally required to meet the STPCD minimum", which removes the downside risk on basic pay even where the employer has never said anything publicly. What it does not touch is progression speed, appraisal gating, TLR generosity, directed time or pay portability — which is where the real variation between trusts lives, and where Aspirations remains an unknown.

The executive pay approval regime. Separately, the government has introduced what it describes as bringing the sector in line with the NHS and colleges. Trusts must obtain DfE approval before advertising any new post with remuneration above £174,000, or performance-related pay above £25,000, with the requirement applying to new appointments from the autumn of 2026. Executive pay is also not to rise faster than teachers' pay without clear justification and advance departmental approval. Incumbent chief executives' pay is not being cut.

Aspirations sits squarely in the population this is aimed at — Schools Week reported that more than 180 academy bosses were paid above the £174,000 threshold. The practical effect for this trust is that the £1.5 million of leadership savings it announced in March 2026, with benchmarked salary limits and caps on the number of senior posts, now has a regulatory reinforcement behind it: any replacement at that level would need departmental sign-off before it could even be advertised. For staff, that makes the leadership-pay strand of the savings programme more likely to stick than a voluntary commitment would be. The mechanics of the threshold, what it does and does not cover, and why maintained-school heads are outside it entirely are set out in our academy trust CEO pay guide.

How to check before you apply

Because this trust publishes nothing about employment terms, essentially all the checking falls on you. None of these are hostile questions, and a school that answers them straight is telling you something good about itself.

• Ask for the current teachers' pay policy in writing, with its approval date. We could not find one published anywhere; the school should be able to produce it. Check the scale figures against the current national points rather than assuming they are up to date.
• Ask whether pay progression is automatic or performance-gated. This is the single most valuable thing a pay policy tells you and the single biggest unknown at this trust. Get the answer in writing.
• Ask whether your existing pay point will be matched. Pay portability is discretionary for academies, and a trust running a savings programme has an incentive to start new staff low.
• Confirm which pay area the school is in. The Hounslow academies are Outer London; Banbury and Dorset are national. Do not compare two Aspirations adverts without checking this.
• Ask directly whether the staffing remodelling has reached this school. The trust announced £1.4 million of curriculum and staffing savings over two years in March 2026. Ask whether consultation has opened, whether it is anticipated, and whether any posts have already gone.
• Ask what the central top-slice is and whether it is falling. The trust said central support costs would drop by £200,000 rising to £600,000. If that saving is passed down rather than retained, your school's budget improves. Ask which it is.
• If the post carries a TLR, get the band, the value and the responsibility in writing, and ask whether responsibility payments were in scope in the remodelling. Our TLR guide explains how the bands and safeguarding work.
• Ask for the directed time calendar — how many hours it totals, whether it is published to staff, and whether union reps were consulted. We have no information about directed time here either way.
• Confirm the pension scheme and employer contribution in the offer letter — Teachers' Pension Scheme on standard terms for teaching posts, Local Government Pension Scheme for support posts, with the employer contribution at the current 28.68 per cent rate.
• Ask who the recognised unions are and whether there is a rep at the school. We found no recognition agreement and no union activity on the public record, so it is worth establishing whether there is anyone to go to.

And a closing note of fairness, because this page has led with an uncomfortable contrast. Aspirations is not a trust in collapse. It is not under intervention, it is not borrowing from the department, its schools are not being rebrokered, and no one has struck there. Its deficit is small, and it has committed half of its savings programme to cutting its own leadership costs rather than starting with the people furthest from the boardroom — which is more than several better-regarded trusts have done. The honest summary is that this is a trust with a squeezed budget, an unusually top-heavy pay history, and a complete absence of published information about what it pays teachers. The first two you can read about. The third you will have to ask about.