At the end of the Summer period in Parliament back in July 2016 following the nation changing referendum along with the resignation of David Cameron and the appointment of Theresa May as his successor, a report emerged from Parliament that related to the pay of stars on our TV screens. This arose because the names of BBC executives who earned more than £150,000 a year were published by the corporation, but the name of stars who earned less than £450,000 a year were not disclosed. The Culture, Media and Sport select committee were very angry and said there was no reason to withhold information of those who receive more than Theresa May’s £143,000 a year.

In a report on a government white paper, the MPs said: “In a world of agents and widespread online gossip, we do not accept that this level of confidentiality is necessary to retain talent, and we are very conscious of the fact that the BBC’s performers, like management, are ultimately remunerated by the licence fee payer.” Conservative chair of the committee Damian Collins said: “It’s disingenuous to say confidentiality is needed to prevent poaching when in general everyone in the industry knows what everyone else is getting paid. “The threshold should be the same for both executives and talent, the salary of anyone getting paid more than the prime minister should be published.”

The list of names above indicates the top earners in our nations Academies. Together as this report indicates, they earn around £21m which is a sum that could be used to build a number of Schools or increase the pay of those who are at the bottom of the pay scale in all of our schools such as the cleaners and the teaching assistants. Many of which are forced to rely on Universal Credit and who end up visiting foodbanks to keep their families fed. The Chair of the Education Select Committee is Robert Halfon who was previously Minister of State for Education. This might explain why he is not as quick as needed to challenge his old department for their failings. However he is close to being a neighbour of Damian Collins (Robert represents Harlow in Essex and Damian Folkstone in Kent). Perhaps Damian could have a word with his neighbour and persuade him to take the same approach with the Academies, that he has taken with the BBC. After all they are both in receipt of public money!