St Ralph Sherwin Catholic MAT Teacher Pay (2026/27)

What this page is and isn't

Every trust profile on this site is about teacher pay. This one needs a caveat before it starts, because the evidence here is not evenly distributed and it would be misleading to present it as though it were.

The St Ralph Sherwin crisis is exceptionally well documented on the finance side: audited accounts, two published notices to improve, DfE benchmarking data, sustained coverage from Schools Week, Education Uncovered and The Tablet, a forensic local analysis from Derby News, a parliamentary written question, and the trust's own statutory reporting pages. It is also exceptionally well documented on the support staff side, because UNISON ran a long public dispute with named schools, dated strike days and a published settlement.

It is less well documented on teacher pay specifically. There is clear, contemporaneous evidence that the NEU balloted and struck over the same restructure, and clear reporting that the proposals put teaching posts and responsibility payments in scope. What we could not find is a published trust teachers' pay policy, a directed time policy, any figure for how many teaching posts were ultimately lost, or any published account of a settlement on the NEU side comparable to the UNISON one. Where that is the case, this page says so rather than filling the gap with inference.

So read this as a page about working at this trust in its current state — teacher or support staff — with the pay question answered as far as the evidence takes it and no further.

What St Ralph Sherwin is

St Ralph Sherwin Catholic Multi Academy Trust is a 25-school Catholic trust under the Diocese of Nottingham, with its central office at St Katherine's House on Mansfield Road in Derby. The DfE's Get Information About Schools register records 25 open academies — 20 primaries and five secondaries — across Derby, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Stockport. Named schools include Saint Benedict Catholic Voluntary Academy in Derby, Blessed Robert Sutton in Burton-on-Trent, St John Houghton in Ilkeston, St Joseph's in Matlock, St Anne's in Buxton, Christ the King in Alfreton and St Mary's in the High Peak.

It is company number 07937154, incorporated on 6 February 2012 as Saint Robert Lawrence Catholic Academy Trust and renamed St Ralph Sherwin on 4 May 2018 — a detail worth knowing if you are searching Companies House or older records. Like every academy trust it is a company limited by guarantee and files full audited accounts, most recently to 31 August 2025.

Every one of those locations sits in the national (rest of England) pay region. There is no London or fringe weighting anywhere in the trust, so a St Ralph Sherwin salary should be read against the national STPCD points, and the trust competes for staff against maintained schools and other Midlands trusts on those same rates.

It is worth registering, before the rest of this page, that the educational picture is not the financial one. The trust reported combined reading, writing and maths at the expected standard of 66 per cent in 2026, four points up on its own 2025 result and three points above the national figure of 63 per cent. Whatever went wrong here went wrong in the finance function, not the classrooms.

The largest academy trust deficit in England

The headline figure is stark and it is not disputed. The DfE's financial benchmarking and insights tool records, for the year September 2024 to August 2025, revenue reserves of minus £9,199,000 and an in-year balance of minus £3,311,000. In plain terms: an accumulated £9.2 million hole, which got £3.3 million deeper during that single year.

Schools Week's analysis of the sector-wide 2024-25 benchmarking data, published on 30 April 2026, confirmed that this was the largest deficit of any academy trust in England — ahead of the Arthur Terry Learning Partnership at £8.4 million and Brooke Weston Trust at £3.4 million. Only seven trusts in the country were more than £1 million in the red. St Ralph Sherwin was more than £1 million ahead of second place.

The trajectory matters as much as the level. Schools Week's earlier report, "Job cuts loom at trust with £9m deficit", recorded a deficit of £5.9 million in 2023-24 rising to £9.2 million in 2024-25. Education Uncovered reported in February 2026 that the trust finished the year with roughly £20,000 in available cash — for a 25-school organisation, effectively nothing — and had been under a notice to improve since 2023.

What the accounts actually disclosed

A deficit on its own is a funding story. What raised this into a governance story is what the trust's own accounts disclosed alongside it — in the accounting officer's statement of regularity, which is the section where a trust is required to declare its own breaches.

• An unapproved £200,000 interest-free loan from the Diocese of Nottingham, with no fixed repayment term, taken without the prior authorisation the Academy Trust Handbook requires.
• Unauthorised severance payments, including a £5,000 payout signed off without DfE approval.
• Capital funding used for day-to-day operational cash flow. Reported figures vary — Schools Week put the misuse of capital funding at over £3.5 million, Derby News at £1.9 million — but the breach itself is disclosed and is not in dispute.
• An unapproved related party transaction with another trust in the same diocese.
• A going concern statement with a material caveat. The auditor stated that the trust's ability to continue operating depends on the successful implementation of a deficit recovery plan and on ongoing financial support from the Department for Education.

The regulatory response followed the standard escalation. The Education and Skills Funding Agency issued a written notice to improve financial management, compliance and governance on 11 August 2023. That did not resolve the position, and the DfE issued a revised notice to improve in February 2026, citing the trust's weak financial position and continued breaches of the handbook. Schools Week reported that the second notice required the trust to ensure all financial recovery proceeded "at pace" and to provide evidence it was expediting efficiencies to bring in-year savings, including staff restructuring. The department has also provided £468,000 in cash-flow loans, and Education Uncovered reported weekly meetings between the trust and DfE officials.

"Incompetence or fraud?"

That is the headline Derby News put on its May 2026 analysis, and because it is provocative it is worth being precise about what the piece actually argues, and what it does not.

What it does is test the trust's own explanation against the trust's own published numbers. The trust attributed its position in part to falling rolls; Derby News's analysis of the accounts found that pupil numbers increased between 2022 and 2025. It found that recruitment accelerated sharply in 2023 despite the budget position, and that non-staff costs rose by around £2.5 million without corresponding growth in pupil numbers. Set against the four disclosed handbook breaches, its conclusion is that leadership had the information needed to intervene in 2023 and chose not to.

What it does not do is allege fraud. The headline poses the two possibilities and the article's own conclusion lands on the first — reckless or negligent management rather than dishonesty. No fraud investigation, finding, referral or charge relating to this trust has been reported by any source we could locate. We are setting the analysis out because it is the most substantive public interrogation of the trust's explanation and a reader weighing up an employer is entitled to see it. We are not endorsing the more serious half of its headline, and neither, on a careful reading, does the article.

The restructure, and who it hit

The trust's response to the notice to improve was a trust-wide restructure. Chief executive Kevin Gritton told Schools Week the trust was "in a financially challenging situation" and had to demonstrate cost-cutting "at pace", with compulsory redundancies a last resort. Education Uncovered reported him indicating 40 compulsory redundancies, and the Bishop of Nottingham telling a parent that the trust was seeking an overall staff reduction of around 10 per cent. Unions put the eventual scope higher — at least 40 and possibly as many as 80 posts — with jobs cut in 14 of the trust's 25 schools.

This is the part of the story that needs care, because the two unions were fighting different halves of the same restructure.

The reason support staff took the harder hit is structural rather than malicious, and it applies across the sector. Teachers' pay is governed by the STPCD, a statutory national framework with defined ranges, defined allowances and — from 2026 — a statutory floor for academies. Support staff are typically on NJC Green Book terms, where grading, hours and working patterns are locally set and therefore locally changeable. When a trust needs to find savings quickly, the terms it can move fastest are the ones nobody else has fixed for it. Removing a TLR from a teacher is possible but bounded and visible; regrading a teaching assistant and moving them to term-time-only is neither.

The strikes, March to July 2026

The leadership change

Lisa Walton was appointed acting chief executive with effect from 8 June 2026, three days after Gritton's resignation, on a term running to August 2027. Schools Week reported that the appointment had been approved by both the Bishop of Nottingham and the Department for Education — which is itself a signal, because a trust with full delegated authority does not need departmental sign-off on its own chief executive. Walton spent four years as deputy at East Midlands Education Trust, a 24-school trust, including 14 months as its interim chief executive, and is a practising Catholic, which matters for a diocesan trust where the CEO post is normally reserved.

A fixed acting term to August 2027 is a meaningful piece of information for anyone weighing up a job here. It signals that the board expects the recovery period to run at least that long, and that a permanent appointment — and with it any permanent decision about the trust's future shape — sits beyond the current academic year.

What this actually means for teacher pay

Here is where the evidence gets thin, and we are going to be explicit about it rather than dress it up.

What the trust says. Its own recruitment material states that it follows nationally agreed terms and conditions for pay, for both teachers and support staff. For teachers, "nationally agreed" means the STPCD; for support staff it means the NJC Green Book. It also states automatic enrolment into the Teachers' Pension Scheme for teaching staff and the option of the Local Government Pension Scheme for support staff, plus a Vivup lifestyle savings and wellbeing package. That is a straightforward, STPCD-following position and there is no evidence of the trust operating a bespoke pay scale.

What we could not find. No published trust teachers' pay policy. No published appraisal or pay progression policy. No directed time policy or calendar. No published trade union recognition agreement. No statement on pay portability for teachers joining from other schools. Several of the trusts profiled elsewhere on this site publish all of these; this one publishes statutory reporting, executive pay reporting and annual accounts but not employment terms.

The trust's own benefits material carries a similar tell, quoting the Teachers' Pension Scheme employer contribution as 23.68 per cent. The rate has been 28.68 per cent since April 2024. Again, this is a stale page rather than a substantive problem — the employer contribution rate is set nationally and no trust can vary it — but it tells you how recently the published material was checked.

The one genuinely teacher-specific pay risk in this restructure is responsibility payments. The NEU's account of the proposals included the removal of TLRs and the downgrading of posts. A TLR attached to your post is a contractual payment and cannot simply be withdrawn, but it can lawfully be removed where the responsibility itself is removed through a genuine restructure, subject to consultation and to the STPCD's safeguarding provisions. Our TLR guide sets out how the bands and safeguarding work. If you hold a TLR at this trust, that is the term to watch.

What's verified and what isn't

• Well evidenced: the £9.2 million deficit, the minus £3.3 million in-year balance, the 25 academies and the trust's company details — from DfE benchmarking data, Get Information About Schools and Companies House, all directly checkable.
• Well evidenced: the two notices to improve, 11 August 2023 and February 2026, because both are published on gov.uk with the trust named.
• Well evidenced: the disclosed handbook breaches — the £200,000 diocesan loan, unauthorised severance, capital funding used for operational cash flow and the related party transaction — because the trust disclosed them in its own accounts.
• Well evidenced: the UNISON dispute, the 16 days of strike action at 14 schools and the July 2026 settlement, reported contemporaneously and confirmed by the trust.
• Well evidenced: the chief executive's resignation on 5 June 2026 and Lisa Walton's appointment as acting chief executive from 8 June 2026 to August 2027, reported by Schools Week and The Tablet.
• Well evidenced: that the NEU balloted and struck at eight to nine trust schools over the same restructure, and that its stated grounds included teacher redundancies and the removal of responsibility payments.

• Not found: any published St Ralph Sherwin teachers' pay policy, appraisal policy, pay progression policy, directed time policy or union recognition agreement. This is the central gap in this profile and the reason it cannot tell you what the trust pays at each point the way some other profiles can.
• Not established: how many teaching posts were actually lost. Proposals ranged from 40 to 80 across all staff groups, the UNISON settlement reversed part of them, and no final figure broken down by staff group has been published.
• Not established: whether the NEU reached a settlement on comparable terms to UNISON's. We found no published NEU settlement statement for this trust.
• Not verified: the Director of People salary. Education Uncovered reported it as six figures; we have not seen the advert and are not treating the specific figure as confirmed.
• Not verified: the exact amount of capital funding used for operational cash flow. Reported figures differ materially between sources (£1.9 million and over £3.5 million). The breach is disclosed; the quantum is not settled in public reporting.
• Not alleged, and not found: any fraud investigation, finding or charge, despite the Derby News headline. The article itself concludes on mismanagement rather than dishonesty.
• Not proposed: any break-up or transfer of the trust's academies. As of September 2026 there is no published proposal to rebroker these schools, unlike at Arthur Terry.

How to check before you apply

None of these are hostile questions, and a school that answers them straight is telling you something good about itself. A school that will not is telling you something too.

• Read the February 2026 notice to improve. It is a free PDF on gov.uk and it is the department's own assessment of this employer. Then check whether a third notice has been issued or the second lifted.
• Check the current position on the benchmarking tool under company number 07937154, and look at the in-year balance as well as revenue reserves. A negative reserve with an improving in-year figure means the recovery plan is working.
• Ask for the current teachers' pay policy in writing, with its approval date. We could not find one published; the school should be able to produce it.
• Confirm your specific pay point in the offer letter, not the range — and check it against the current national points rather than the advert. A live advert here quoted a 2024/25 band.
• If the post carries a TLR, get the band, the value and the responsibility in writing, and ask directly whether it was in scope in the restructure. Responsibility payments were explicitly part of what the NEU was fighting.
• Ask whether this particular school was one of the 14 affected, whether its structure has settled, and whether any further consultation is anticipated before August 2027.
• Ask what the central top-slice is and whether it is changing under the recovery plan. In a deficit trust this is where your school's budget goes.
• Confirm TPS enrolment and the employer contribution in the offer letter. The published benefits page still quotes the pre-April 2024 rate of 23.68 per cent; the correct current rate is 28.68 per cent.
• Talk to the NEU or UNISON rep at the school. After sixteen days on strike there will be one, and they will give you a far more precise picture of the current position than any published document can.

A closing point of fairness, because this page has been unavoidably bleak. The staff at these schools organised across two unions, took sustained action, drew in parents, clergy and nine MPs, forced the resignation of a chief executive and won back part of what was proposed to be taken from them. The trust's results went up during the worst year of its financial life. The people who created the deficit are not the people now running the trust. A workforce that has just proved it can defend its terms is a real asset, and it is the main thing this trust currently has going for it.