Leigh Academies Trust Teacher Pay Explained (2026/27)

Leigh Academies Trust is a useful test case for a question this site asks about every trust: does it actually pay more, or does it just look distinctive? For LAT, the honest answer is that the distinctiveness is structural, not financial. It is one of the very few English trusts whose own school estate spans all four STPCD pay areas — national, fringe, outer London and inner London — inside a single organisation, purely because of where its schools happen to sit on the map between Kent and south-east London. That is a genuinely useful thing for an applicant to understand, and it is not the same as saying the trust pays well.

What follows is built from LAT's own signed Annual Report and Financial Statements for the year to 31 August 2023 — the most recent full report we could read in a legible format — from live vacancy adverts on the DfE's Teaching Vacancies service, and from the trust's own published information about its current size. Where a figure comes from an older accounting period than the trust's current scale, we say so.

What Leigh Academies Trust actually is

LAT was established in 2008 in North Kent and has grown into one of the largest multi-academy trusts in the South East. Its own published information states it now runs 33 academies educating more than 25,000 young people from two months to nineteen years across Kent, Medway and south-east London, all within roughly an hour's drive along the South Thames Corridor. Its members — the equivalent of a company's shareholders — are Sir Geoffrey Leigh, Kent County Council, the University of Kent and the University of Greenwich, and its registered office is Strood Academy in Rochester.

The trust's own signed accounts, covering the year to 31 August 2023, list 31 academies at that date: 14 primary academies (most with an attached nursery), 16 secondary academies, one 4-19 all-through school (The Hundred of Hoo Academy), an 11-19 free school operating under a University Technical College licence from the Baker Dearing Trust (The Leigh UTC), and two special schools (Milestone Academy and Snowfields Academy). Two more academies joined in the time since, which is consistent with the current total of 33 confirmed independently by the DfE's own financial benchmarking tool. We could not locate a legible, current annual report covering the 2023/24 or 2024/25 financial year, so some of the figures on this page — clearly marked where they appear — are one or two years behind the trust's present scale.

Governance is conventional for a trust of this size: a central Board of Directors sets strategy and delegates day-to-day running of each school to an Academy Board and Principal, under a Scheme of Delegation. The trust also runs three wholly-owned subsidiaries — LAT Enterprises C.I.C. (community and sports facility lettings), LAT Apprenticeships C.I.C., and The Hundred of Hoo Nursery and Kids' Club — none of which affect teacher pay directly.

Does LAT have its own pay scale?

This is the question the site's editorial brief asked us to verify thoroughly, so we will be direct about how we checked it. We searched specifically for a Leigh Academies Trust teachers' pay policy — the kind of document that, at United Learning, sets out a bespoke PT1-PT6 and EPT1-EPT3 structure with its own progression rules. We found no such document published anywhere: not on LAT's own website, not through a general web search, and not referenced in the trust's signed accounts, which discuss pay only in the context of the Senior Pay Committee that sets executive remuneration.

What we did find is a large, consistent body of live job adverts, and they all say the same thing in the same vocabulary. Every teaching post we checked on Teaching Vacancies for a LAT academy is advertised as "MPS/UPS based on experience" or "MPS/UPS commensurate with experience", with a regional allowance added where the academy's location attracts one. Leadership posts are advertised against the national Leadership Group pay range rather than any trust-specific band. That is the vocabulary of a trust that has adopted the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) as its own pay framework, not the vocabulary of a trust running something different underneath it.

The four pay areas inside one trust

Because LAT pays the unmodified national scale, the actual cash figure a LAT teacher receives depends entirely on which of the STPCD's four English pay areas their academy sits in. Live vacancy adverts give a clear, consistent picture of how LAT's own estate splits across those areas:

• National (rest of England): Leigh Academy Rainham, The Hundred of Hoo Academy and Leigh Academy Minster & Rainham — all in Medway — were advertised as plain "MPS/UPS based on experience" with no regional allowance mentioned.
• London Fringe: Longfield Academy, Ebbsfleet Academy and Dartford Primary Academy — Kent districts adjoining Greater London — were advertised with the London Fringe allowance added on top of the national point.
• Outer London: Leigh Academy Bexley, in the London Borough of Bexley, was advertised as "MPS/UPS commensurate with experience + Outer London Allowance".
• Inner London: Leigh Academy Halley, in Thamesmead, was advertised as "MPS/UPS based on experience + Inner London", and a Director of Learning post at the same academy was advertised on the "Leadership scale based on experience + Inner London allowance".

The Halley result surprises most people who don't already know the STPCD area map, because Thamesmead reads as outer, suburban London on any ordinary map. But the STPCD classifies pay areas by London borough, not by how central a place feels, and the Royal Borough of Greenwich — where Halley sits — is one of the boroughs classed as Inner London for pay purposes, alongside Lewisham, Southwark and Tower Hamlets. Bexley, immediately next door, is not on that list, which is exactly why the LAT academy there advertises Outer London while Halley advertises Inner London. Neither figure is a LAT decision; both are the national rulebook applied correctly to two adjoining boroughs.

Here is what that actually means in cash, using this site's confirmed 2026/27 STPCD figures — these are the national points LAT pays without modification, not LAT's own numbers:

An ECT starting at Leigh Academy Rainham on M1 and an ECT starting at Leigh Academy Halley on the same point are, on these figures, £7,660 apart a year — inside the same trust, on the same contract terms, for what is recognisably the same job. That gap is a function of London weighting, not of LAT policy, but it is the single most important number on this page for anyone choosing between LAT academies on salary.

TLR and leadership pay

The same pattern holds above the main and upper pay ranges. A Head of Learning — MFL post at Leigh Academy Rainham was advertised as "MPS/UPS based on experience + TLR2A (£3,872)", a figure that sits squarely inside the national TLR2 range of £3,651 to £8,913. A Head of Learning — Geography post at Leigh Academy Tonbridge was advertised more vaguely as "MPS/UPS based on experience + TLR", without a specific figure. Both are consistent with the standard national TLR1/TLR2/TLR3 structure, not a LAT-specific responsibility payment scheme.

Leadership posts follow the same logic: the Director of Learning — Maths vacancy at Leigh Academy Halley was advertised against the "Leadership scale based on experience + Inner London allowance" — the national Leadership Group pay range, weighted for the academy's STPCD area, exactly as it would be at a maintained Greenwich school. We found no published LAT headteacher or executive pay range, and no evidence that leadership posts across the trust's 33 academies are benchmarked to anything other than the standard national leadership range for each school's size and complexity.

LAT's SEN provision — Milestone Academy and Snowfields Academy, its two special schools, plus SEN posts at mainstream academies such as Leigh Academy Rainham — is advertised on the same basis: "MPS/UPS based on experience" plus, where applicable, the national SEN allowance of £2,885 to £5,690. There is no LAT-specific SEN pay enhancement that we could find.

What real job adverts show

Because LAT publishes no pay policy, live vacancy adverts on Teaching Vacancies are the best evidence available, and they are worth checking yourself before applying — the trust posts a large, constantly rotating list. At the time of writing, examples included:

• Teacher of Business Studies, Leigh Academy Bexley — "MPS/UPS commensurate with experience + Outer London Allowance".
• Teacher of Maths, Leigh Academy Halley — "MPS/UPS based on experience + Inner London".
• Class Teacher, Leigh Academy Hundred of Hoo — "MPS/UPS based on experience" (national rate, no allowance).
• Head of Learning – MFL, Leigh Academy Rainham — "MPS/UPS based on experience + TLR2A (£3,872)".
• Director of Learning – Maths, Leigh Academy Halley — "Leadership scale based on experience + Inner London allowance".
• SEN Teacher, Leigh Academy Rainham — "MPS/UPS based on experience".

Adverts also consistently list the same headline benefits: Teachers' Pension Scheme (or Local Government Pension Scheme for support roles), 24/7 access to a free virtual GP service, an Employee Assistance Programme, enhanced family-friendly policies and free onsite parking. None of these adverts we checked mention a directed-time allowance, a signing bonus or any above-scale premium — which is itself consistent with a trust paying the unmodified national scale.

Pay progression and appraisal

We could not find a published LAT appraisal or pay progression policy, which means we cannot describe LAT's process with the same confidence we could for a trust like United Learning, whose Contribution Based Pay scheme is set out in detail in a public document. What we can say is that nothing in LAT's public record — the accounts, the careers pages, or live adverts — suggests a departure from the standard STPCD position: annual pay progression assessed through the school's normal appraisal cycle, upper pay range applications considered on request, and pay decisions made at academy level by the Principal within the trust's Scheme of Delegation.

LAT's own People Strategy, described in its 2022/23 accounts, is worth knowing about separately from pay itself. It commits the trust to "competitive compensation and benefits", a new trust-wide CPD platform called "Thrive", published career pathways, and a specific focus on early-career teacher support through the Early Career Framework — all administered through the Leigh Institute described later on this page.

Pension: TPS and LGPS

Pension arrangements at LAT are entirely standard and unusually well documented, because the trust's signed accounts include a detailed pension note. Teaching staff are members of the Teachers' Pension Scheme (TPS) — a statutory, contributory defined-benefit scheme, exactly as at a maintained school, with no alternative arrangement of the kind United Learning proposed and then abandoned in 2025. LAT's accounts disclose an employer contribution rate of 23.68% of pensionable pay for the year to 31 August 2023 (including the 0.08% administration levy), rising to 28.68% from 1 April 2024 following the national TPS valuation — the same increase that applied to every academy trust and maintained school in England. LAT's employer pension costs paid to the TPS that year were £14,757,000.

Support staff are members of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), a funded defined-benefit scheme. LAT participates via three separate local authority funds — Kent County Council, the London Borough of Bexley and the Royal Borough of Greenwich — which lines up neatly with the trust's own geographic spread from inland Kent through Bexley into Greenwich. Employer LGPS contributions were £6,544,000 in 2022/23, with the agreed rate for future years set at 28.6% from 1 April 2024. Read our guide to the 2015 TPS scheme for what the contribution rate actually buys in retirement terms.

Staff numbers and the pay bill

LAT's signed accounts for the year to 31 August 2023 — covering 31 academies at that date — give an unusually granular picture of the trust's workforce and pay bill. The average number of staff employed during the year was 3,204: 1,315 teaching staff, 1,854 administration and support staff, and 35 management, down slightly from 3,283 the year before. Total staff costs were £126,067,000, of which £93,272,000 was wages and salaries, against total trust income of roughly £205.4 million that year.

The accounts also disclose chief executive S P Beamish's remuneration in the band £305,000-£310,000, plus employer pension contributions of £60,000-£65,000 — up from £280,000-£285,000 plus £55,000-£60,000 the year before. Total key management personnel remuneration (executive directors and academy principals combined) was £5,351,476. The number of staff whose employee benefits exceeded £60,000, excluding pension contributions, rose from 153 to 209 in a single year — a meaningful increase, though the accounts don't break down how much of that reflects genuine salary growth against how much reflects the trust simply having more senior posts as it has grown.

None of these figures are unusual for a trust educating more than 25,000 pupils across 33 schools — LAT's combined income is now reported by the trust itself at over £250m, though that is a current, unaudited figure from its own recruitment materials rather than a figure we could verify against a signed set of accounts covering the same period.

The IB curriculum and the Leigh Institute

Two features of LAT are genuinely distinctive, even though neither shows up as extra pay. First, every LAT academy is either a fully accredited International Baccalaureate World School or a candidate school, spanning the Primary Years Programme, Middle Years Programme and Career-related/Diploma Programme — a trust-wide curriculum commitment that is unusual at this scale in the English state sector. It brings real CPD and workload implications (IB moderation, planning and training sit alongside ordinary STPCD duties) but no IB-specific salary uplift that we could find anywhere in the trust's public record.

Second, LAT operates The Leigh Institute, an umbrella body bringing together the trust's teacher training and development organisations: the Thames Gateway Teaching School Hub, the Kent and Medway Maths Hub, Kent and Medway Training (KMT) and LAT Apprenticeships. Collectively they work with more than 400 schools across Kent and Medway. In the year covered by the most recent accounts we could read, KMT supported nearly 200 trainee teachers to Qualified Teacher Status, and the Teaching School Hub worked with more than 800 early-career teachers during their induction period, of whom 580 were recruited and supported to access the hub's full suite of National Professional Qualifications. For anyone starting a teaching career at a LAT academy, this is a genuine, well-resourced early-career support structure — it just isn't a pay premium.

What we couldn't verify

Being explicit about the gaps matters here, because several of LAT's headline facts come from a 2022/23 annual report that is now more than two years old relative to the trust's current scale.

• Well evidenced: the absence of a bespoke LAT pay scale — confirmed by the absence of any published pay policy and by consistent, current job advert wording across many academies.
• Well evidenced: the four-pay-area structure (national, fringe, outer London, inner London), evidenced directly by named academies in live job adverts.
• Well evidenced: the TPS employer contribution rate (23.68% rising to 28.68%) and the LGPS arrangement via three named local authorities — both stated directly in LAT's signed accounts.
• Well evidenced but dated: staff numbers (3,204), total pay bill (£126.1m) and CEO pay (£305,000-£310,000) — all from the year to 31 August 2023, the most recent legible annual report we could access. LAT has grown from 31 to 33 academies since, so current figures will be somewhat higher.

• Not found: any published LAT teachers' pay policy, appraisal policy, or pay progression policy.
• Not found: any directed-time policy or statement about contracted hours beyond the standard STPCD position.
• Not found: a legible LAT annual report for 2023/24 or 2024/25 — the current pupil, staff and income figures on the trust's own site are more recent than the figures in this page's pay-bill section, and we have flagged the gap rather than blend the two sets of numbers together.
• Not verified: whether any individual LAT academy pays a local, informal above-scale enhancement not reflected in its Teaching Vacancies advert — check with the specific school.

LAT and 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 it. Section 59 and Schedule 3 commenced on 29 June 2026, giving the Secretary of State the power to make a minimum remuneration order, but academies are only actually bound once that order is made — the Department for Education has said that will be no earlier than September 2026, and none had been made at the time of writing. A government amendment confirmed the Act sets a floor, not a ceiling.

For LAT specifically, this legislation changes almost nothing in practice. A trust that already pays the unmodified national MPS/UPS and Leadership ranges across all of its academies clears any statutory floor set by reference to those same ranges by construction — there is no gap to close. Read our full guide to the academy pay floor for how the Act affects trusts that currently pay below or above the national scale.

How to check pay before you apply

Because LAT publishes no pay policy, the only reliable way to know what a specific post actually pays is to check the live advert and ask directly. None of the following questions are awkward, and a well-run academy will answer them without hesitation.

• Check the live Teaching Vacancies advert for the specific academy — it will state MPS/UPS or the Leadership range, plus any regional allowance, in the advert text itself.
• Confirm which STPCD pay area the academy sits in — national, fringe, outer London or inner London — since neighbouring LAT academies can sit in different areas, as Bexley and Halley show.
• Ask which specific point you are being offered, not just "MPS/UPS" — the range from M1 to U3 covers a spread of tens of thousands of pounds depending on region.
• If a TLR is offered, ask for the exact figure and letter (e.g. TLR2A) rather than accepting "TLR" as a description — the national TLR2 range alone spans thousands of pounds.
• Ask for the school's appraisal and pay progression policy in writing, since none is published centrally by the trust.
• Confirm the pension — Teachers Pension Scheme for teaching posts, Local Government Pension Scheme for support posts — and which LGPS fund applies (Kent, Bexley or Greenwich) for a support-staff post.
• Ask about contracted hours and directed time directly, since no trust-wide statement is published.

You can model what any advertised salary means after tax, National Insurance and pension contributions with our take-home pay calculator, and check the exact national scale point you'd be moving to or from with our teacher pay point calculator.