Star Academies Teacher Pay Explained

Most of the trust profiles on this site end up being about the gap between a headline salary and the hours behind it. Star Academies is different, and more current. The pay question here is closed almost before it opens — the trust publishes a clear commitment to national terms, its adverts quote recognisable MPS/UPS ranges, and there is nothing to argue about. What is genuinely live, and what makes this the freshest story of any trust we have profiled, is a dispute about what a teacher is: whether a specialist delivering lessons over a screen from the other end of the country counts as teaching a class, or as something else that happens to look like it.

That question is not going to stay confined to one academy in Lancashire. Specialist shortages in maths, physics and computing are a structural feature of English education, not a local accident, and remote delivery is the cheapest available answer to them. Star happened to be the trust that tried it at scale and got a strike ballot in return. Whatever you make of the merits, if you are applying to teach a shortage subject anywhere in England, the arguments rehearsed at The Valley Leadership Academy over the winter of 2025–26 are arguments you may well meet again. As always, this page separates what is well evidenced from what is one side's case and from what we simply could not establish.

What Star Academies actually is

Star Academies is a multi-academy trust running 36 academies according to the Department for Education's Get Information About Schools database, educating 23,752 pupils as at the May 2025 census, with an average staff headcount of roughly 2,710 people — about 2,161 full-time equivalent. It operates through five regional partnerships, with a footprint concentrated in the North West, Yorkshire and the Midlands: Blackburn, Preston, Blackpool, Bolton, Bradford, Birmingham and beyond. Its most recently disclosed revenue reserve was £40.07m.

The trust's history matters for anyone searching for information about it, because the name changed relatively recently. It was incorporated as Tauheedul Education Trust — Companies House number 07353849 — and renamed to Star Academies on 2 July 2018, a rebrand it framed at the time as reflecting its expansion beyond its original Muslim faith-school base into broader non-faith provision. Plenty of older coverage, union guidance and school documentation still uses the Tauheedul name, and several individual academies do too: Tauheedul Islam Boys' High School and Tauheedul Islam Girls' High School in Blackburn both remain part of the trust under their original names. If you are researching the employer, search both names.

One genuinely distinctive feature of the trust's profile is its sixth-form partnership with Eton College, delivered through two academies branded Eton Star Dudley and Eton Star Oldham. Whatever your view of that arrangement, it tells you something real about the trust's positioning and ambitions: this is not a quiet regional trust keeping its head down. It operates nationally visible partnerships, runs teacher training at scale, and its chief executive is one of the more prominent figures in the English academy sector. That visibility cuts both ways, and the rest of this page is partly a record of it cutting in both directions at once.

The pay position: national terms, stated plainly

Star Academies is clearer about its pay position than most trusts in England, and it deserves credit for that. Its own FAQ page for prospective staff states that the trust is "committed to offering national terms and conditions in line with the School Teacher's Pay and Conditions document". It goes further than the usual boilerplate by naming the specific national agreements it applies — the Burgundy Book for teaching staff and the NJC Green Book for support staff — and by stating that "this commitment is protected via a Recognition and Collective Agreement between Star and the national Trade Unions".

That last clause is the part worth noticing. Plenty of trusts say they follow national pay; considerably fewer say the commitment is underwritten by a collective agreement with recognised unions. Compare it with the hedged formulations other trusts use — "the principles of" the STPCD, or "broadly in line with" — and Star's wording is at the stronger end of what you will find in the sector.

The adverts corroborate it. A teacher of maths post at The Valley Leadership Academy in Bacup, advertised on the DfE's Teaching Vacancies service, quotes "Full time equivalent salary: MPS/UPS". A post at the trust's Small Heath academy quotes "MPS/UPS plus TLR 1 (£10,174.00)" — a recognisable national TLR 1 figure rather than a bespoke trust allowance. Against this site's illustrative 2026/27 national figures, that means a Star teacher should expect something in the region of £34,069 at M1 and £46,940 at the top of the main range. The trust's estate sits entirely outside the London weighting areas, so the National band is the relevant one for effectively every post. Our pay scales guide sets out the full structure, and you can model the take-home position with our take-home pay calculator.

The gap in the public record is that we could not find a published pay policy document anywhere. The trust's own document zone does not appear to carry one, and — as flagged above — the documents that surface in search belong to a different trust entirely. So the pay commitment rests on the trust's own FAQ statement and on advert evidence, both of which are good sources, rather than on a dated policy document you could check the review date on. Ask for the current pay policy at offer stage; any trust should provide it.

The virtual teacher dispute

This is the reason this page exists in the shape it does, and it is the most current dispute documented anywhere in this section of the site.

The Valley Leadership Academy in Bacup, Lancashire, could not recruit a specialist maths teacher. The trust's response was to have maths lessons delivered remotely by a teacher based elsewhere — reportedly around 300 miles away — with pupils in the classroom receiving the lesson over a screen. The NEU's response was to ballot for industrial action, describing the arrangement publicly as "dystopian". The ballot returned 82 per cent in favour on a turnout meeting the statutory threshold, and six strike dates were confirmed across December 2025 and January 2026. The dispute was covered by Schools Week and by ITV News Granada.

Both sides of the virtual teacher argument

We are not going to take a side on this, because it is a genuine disagreement between two defensible positions rather than a case of one party behaving obviously badly. It is worth setting out each case at its strongest, since that is the form in which you will have to weigh them if you end up working somewhere that faces the same problem.

The part neither side has much incentive to say out loud is that both cases rest on the same underlying failure. England does not train or retain enough maths teachers, and has not for a long time. Every option available to that academy was a bad one; the argument was about which bad option to pick. The 82 per cent ballot result tells you how strongly the staff group felt about the answer chosen, and is a data point about the industrial climate in that school regardless of where you land on the merits.

The school day: early starts and after-school sessions

Separately from the dispute, the shape of the working day at Star academies is worth understanding, because it is demanding in a way the salary line does not show. This section is drawn entirely from individual academy websites — primary sources, published by the schools themselves — and we have tried to be precise about what they do and do not establish.

• Tauheedul Islam Boys' High School, Blackburn: the published school day runs 7.55am to 3.05pm, with students expected to arrive at 7.45am for the morning line-up, followed by intervention and after-school clubs until 3.55pm.
• Eden Boys' School, Preston: the published timetable lists a 07:57 start to the school day, and states explicitly that all students are expected to attend two after-school sessions per week as a core requirement.
• Similar patterns — early starts, line-ups and structured after-school provision — appear on the published timings of Star academies in Bolton, Birmingham, Bradford and Small Heath.

Two further points of honesty. First, we found no published statement of teacher directed hours exceeding the standard 1,265-hour cap anywhere in Star's material — no equivalent of the disputes other trusts have had over directed time arithmetic. Second, we found no Saturday school or holiday-period teaching provision either, which some trusts with a similar ethos do run. On the evidence available, the directed time position appears to be conventional, and the intensity is in how the standard day is organised rather than in how long it formally is.

That said, those after-school sessions are described as a core requirement for students, and students do not supervise themselves. The reasonable inference is that staff participation in after-school provision is an expected part of the job at these schools rather than a voluntary extra — but that is an inference, and the right thing to do is ask. How many after-school sessions a week will I be expected to run or supervise? Are they inside the directed time budget? Can I see the directed time calendar? Those are ordinary questions and a well-run school will answer them without hesitation.

Union recognition — and a striking number

Star Academies recognises trade unions. That much is confirmed both by its own FAQ page — which refers to a Recognition and Collective Agreement with "the national Trade Unions" — and by its annual accounts, which describe a termly Joint Consultative and Negotiating Council (JCNC). A standing termly negotiating body is real machinery, and more than some trusts of comparable size maintain.

What we could not establish, in any published document we could find, is which unions are actually signatories to that agreement. Star's material refers to "the national Trade Unions" generically and never names them. Compare this with trusts that list their recognised unions explicitly — Ark, for instance, names all seven. It is not a scandal that Star does not, but it is a gap, and if union recognition matters to you it is worth asking which unions specifically hold recognition and whether that includes your own.

There is one figure in the trust's own accounts that is genuinely striking, and we think it is worth reporting clearly. The statutory facility-time disclosure in Star's 2021–22 annual report and accounts records the number of employees who were relevant union officials during the relevant period as zero, with zero per cent of any employee's time spent on paid trade union activities that year.

This needs handling carefully, in both directions. It is not an accusation, and it is not evidence that the trust obstructs union activity. Facility time returns are a narrow statutory disclosure with specific definitions, and a nil return can arise for procedural reasons as well as substantive ones. It is also a single year, and 2021–22 is now four years old.

But it is a real data point about demonstrated, day-to-day union access, and it is the kind of thing that is difficult to find unless you go looking in the accounts. By way of contrast, other large trusts researched for this site have disclosed dozens of relevant union officials with paid facility time in the equivalent return. A trust with roughly 2,700 staff disclosing no union officials with paid facility time is a different practical environment from one disclosing dozens, whatever the formal recognition position says on paper. Read alongside the 82 per cent strike ballot at Bacup four years later, it is at minimum an interesting pairing.

The 2026 fraud disclosure

In February 2026, Star Academies disclosed that it had been the victim of a significant financial irregularity — fraud — occurring over a period of several years. The trust reported that the funds were subsequently recovered. This was covered by Schools Week.

For context on what this does and does not mean for you as a potential employee: a historic fraud that has been identified, disclosed and recovered from is, in governance terms, a system that eventually worked, albeit later than anyone would want. The trust's disclosed revenue reserve of £40.07m indicates a financially substantial organisation. Trust finances matter to teachers mainly through their consequences — restructures, redundancy risk, class sizes, resourcing — and there is nothing in the public record suggesting those consequences here. It is a fact to be aware of, not a reason in itself to look elsewhere.

CEO pay and governance history

Tes reported on 13 February 2026 that the pay of Star's chief executive, Sir Hamid Patel, for 2024–25 was £299,220 — described in that reporting as the highest within its comparison group of similar large trusts.

Executive pay in the academy sector is a well-worn argument and we will not rehearse all of it. The points worth making are narrow. A figure around £299,000 is roughly six times the top of the Upper Pay Range, and it is paid from the same funding envelope that pays teachers. Equally, the trust runs 36 schools, employs around 2,700 people and turns over a substantial budget, and the comparison people usually reach for — a headteacher's salary — is not really the right one for a role of that scale. Where the figure lands for you probably depends on what you already think about academy governance. What is useful is simply to know the number, because most applicants never do.

One further piece of historic context, offered as context and not as current status. In February 2019, the Department for Education issued a termination warning notice concerning Highfield Leadership Academy in Blackpool, part of the trust, over concerns relating to its performance following an "inadequate" judgement. That is now more than six years old. We do not have information on how it was resolved, and a termination warning from 2019 says very little about any Star academy in 2026. We include it because it is part of the public record and because leaving it out would be selective, not because it should weigh heavily in a current decision. If you are applying to Highfield specifically, check the school's current Ofsted position directly rather than relying on this.

Professional development: the genuine strength

If the pay position is neutral and the industrial picture is contested, the professional development offer is the part of Star's proposition with the most substance behind it — and for an early-career teacher in particular it may matter more than anything else on this page.

• The Star Institute supports initial teacher training through a SCITT, with 76 trainees per the trust's own figures. A trust that trains its own teachers at that scale has, by necessity, built real mentoring and subject-development capacity internally.
• Four Teaching School Hubs, which between them support over 1,000 partner schools. Teaching School Hub designation is competitive and DfE-allocated; running four of them puts Star among the more significant CPD providers in the sector, not just for its own staff but regionally.
• A partnership with the National Institute of Teaching (NIoT), the government-backed body established to deliver teacher training and development at national scale.
• The Star Talent Academy, an internal programme for developing staff towards leadership roles — the kind of structured internal pipeline that determines whether progression at a large trust is a real prospect or a vague one.
• "Teach Like a Star", the trust's own pedagogical framework, applied across its academies.

That is a genuinely substantial infrastructure, and it is not marketing language dressed up — Teaching School Hub designations and SCITT trainee numbers are externally verifiable facts, not claims a trust can simply assert. If you want structured development, clear routes into leadership and the chance to work alongside people doing teacher training seriously, this is a real reason to consider Star over an identically paid post elsewhere.

The honest counterweight is the same one that applies to every trust with a house pedagogical framework. "Teach Like a Star" means there is a trust-wide model of what good teaching looks like, and you will be expected to teach within it. For some teachers that is a relief — shared expectations, shared resources, less reinventing. For others it is a constraint they find wearing. Neither reaction is wrong, but it is worth knowing which one is yours before you accept a post, and worth asking at interview how much latitude an individual teacher actually has within the framework.

Benefits, wellbeing and the gaps

Star publishes a benefits list on its own site. It is modest rather than lavish, and roughly what you would expect from a trust paying national rates.

• A Simplyhealth cash plan — reimbursement towards routine health costs such as dental, optical and physiotherapy. Small, but genuinely used, and worth more than it looks over a year.
• A 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme, offering up to six counselling sessions. The 24/7 availability and the specified session count are both better than a vague "wellbeing support" line.
• An electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme — potentially the most financially significant item on the list for anyone about to change car, because salary sacrifice on an EV is unusually tax-efficient.
• Internal recognition schemes branded "Star Letters" and "Star Awards". Whether this lands as meaningful recognition or corporate wallpaper depends entirely on how it is run at your school.
• Teachers' Pension Scheme access follows from the trust's stated commitment to national terms and conditions — but confirm it explicitly at offer stage, as you should anywhere.

On the pension point: the Teachers' Pension Scheme is a large part of total teacher remuneration, and any arrangement that trades pension contributions for higher take-home pay is almost always a poor deal across a career. There is no suggestion Star does anything of the kind — its national terms commitment points the other way — but it is the single most important thing to confirm about any academy trust. Our guide to the 2015 scheme explains why it matters so much.

Two gaps are worth naming. A staff wellbeing framework is referenced in the trust's accounts, but we could not find it published anywhere independently — so there is a stated framework we cannot read, which is less useful than either a published one or none at all. And we found no workload charter, which a growing number of trusts now publish as a concrete commitment on marking, planning and communication expectations. Neither absence is damning. Both are reasonable things to ask about.

What's verified and what isn't

As with every page in this section, here is the evidential status of what is above, set out plainly rather than presented with uniform confidence.

• Well evidenced: that Star Academies commits to national terms and conditions in line with the STPCD, naming the Burgundy Book and the NJC Green Book, protected by a recognition and collective agreement — stated by the trust on its own site and corroborated by MPS/UPS advert evidence.
• Well evidenced: the December 2025 to January 2026 NEU dispute at The Valley Leadership Academy over remote maths teaching — the 82 per cent ballot, the six confirmed strike dates, the NEU's "dystopian" characterisation and the trust's "targeted response to the national shortage of specialist maths teachers" statement are all in Schools Week and ITV News Granada reporting.
• Well evidenced: the school day timings and after-school session requirements, taken from individual academy websites — primary sources published by the schools themselves.
• Well evidenced: the February 2026 disclosure of a historic financial irregularity with funds recovered, and the £299,220 CEO pay figure for 2024–25 reported by Tes in February 2026.
• Well evidenced: the scale figures — 36 academies per DfE Get Information About Schools, 23,752 pupils at the May 2025 census, ~2,710 headcount, £40.07m revenue reserve, the Tauheedul renaming on 2 July 2018.
• Well evidenced: the CPD infrastructure — Star Institute SCITT with 76 trainees, four Teaching School Hubs supporting 1,000+ partner schools, the NIoT partnership, Star Talent Academy and "Teach Like a Star".

• Not verified: how the virtual teacher dispute ended. The public record stops at the January 2026 strike dates. Do not assume it is resolved in either direction.
• Not verified: which specific unions are signatories to the recognition and collective agreement. The trust refers to "the national Trade Unions" generically and never names them in any document we found.
• Not found: any published Star Academies pay policy document. We checked the trust's own document zone. The pay policies that surface in search belong to the unrelated STAR Multi Academy Trust and were deliberately not used.
• Not found: any published staff wellbeing framework — one is referenced in the accounts but is not publicly available — and no workload charter of any kind.
• Not found: any statement of teacher directed hours exceeding the 1,265-hour cap, and no Saturday school or holiday-period teaching provision. On the evidence available the directed time position appears conventional.
• Not available: verified independent review-site data on working culture. Glassdoor and Indeed both returned access errors and no figure could be confirmed.
• Unresolved historic item: the February 2019 DfE termination warning over Highfield Leadership Academy in Blackpool. We do not know how it was resolved and it is over six years old.

What to ask before you apply

The pay questions are largely settled here, which means the questions worth your interview time are about hours, industrial relations and how specialist gaps get covered. These are all ordinary questions, and reluctance to answer any of them is itself informative.

• How are specialist subject shortages currently covered at this school? The single most Star-specific question on this list. Ask explicitly whether any teaching in your department is delivered remotely, and if so on what basis and for how long it is expected to continue.
• What are the actual daily timings for staff, as opposed to the pupil day published on the website? Given 7.45–7.55am starts and provision running to around 3.55pm, ask what time staff are expected on site and what time the last directed commitment ends.
• How many after-school sessions a week will I run or supervise, and are they inside the directed time budget? Ask to see the directed time calendar. You are entitled to ask and a well-run school will show you.
• Which unions hold recognition, and is there an on-site rep at this school? The trust confirms recognition exists but never names the unions, and its 2021–22 facility time return disclosed no relevant union officials at all.
• Ask for the current pay policy in writing. We could not find one published. The review date on the document tells you how current the position is, and confirms the national-terms commitment applies to your specific post.
• Confirm the pension is the Teachers' Pension Scheme on standard terms, with standard employer contributions. Always, everywhere, in writing.
• Ask which specific pay point you are being offered, not just the MPS/UPS range on the advert. An advert range is not an offer.
• Ask what "Teach Like a Star" means in practice for your day-to-day planning — how prescribed are lesson structures, resources and assessment, and how much professional latitude do individual teachers have within the framework?
• Talk to staff who work at that specific school now. A 36-academy trust spread across three regions will vary enormously between sites, and the trust-level picture on this page tells you far less than a conversation with a current member of staff will.

A final framing point. Nothing on this page is a reason not to work for Star Academies. National pay stated clearly and backed by a collective agreement is better practice than most of the sector manages; the CPD and teacher training infrastructure is genuinely among the stronger offers available at a trust paying national rates. What the page should do is make you a better-informed candidate — one who knows to ask about remote delivery, about the shape of the day, and about union access, rather than finding out about all three in your first half-term.