Academy trusts fail test over women’s equal pay

Government study shows wide gender income gaps

THREE OF Yorkshire’s school academy trusts have emerged towards the top of a Government table of businesses who pay their male employees more than their female colleagues.

The data from the Equalities Office reveals that two colleges in the region also have gender pay gaps of more than 35 per cent.

They are among around threequarters of large employers with significant pay disparities, the data shows.

Findings from more than 1,000 organisations who have published their gender pay figures online indicate that even though all are “equal pay employers”, many female workers have yet to break through the “glass ceiling” into higher-paid roles.

Based on hourly earnings, 74 per cent of companies admit to paying pay men more than women, while only 15 per cent pay women more.

The Trinity Academy Trust, which runs five schools in the Halifax and Wakefield areas, and the Bradford Diocesan Academies Trust, which operates 13 primaries and secondaries, are the two Yorkshire employers with the biggest gender pay gaps – both 44 per cent.

Another trust, which runs a single school in Pontefract, has a gap of 42 per cent, and two colleges, in Huddersfield and Bradford, have gaps of 35 and 40 per cent.

The Bradford and Trinity trusts said last night that the figures reflected the number of women in lower and junior grades.

Peter Thompson, director of operations at the Bradford Diocesan trust, said: “This is a fairly common position across schools with a significant proportion of women in the workforce, often at the lower end of the pay spectrum in non-teaching posts.”

The Trust’s gender pay report shows that although three-quarters of its workforce is female, “there is a substantial skew in lower-salaried jobs which are historically and predominantly occupied by females”.

Only 12 per cent of workers in its bottom-paid sector were men.

The Trinity trust said in its Gender Pay Gap report that it was confident that the gap was “not a pay issue” and that it had a “gender neutral” approach to pay.

Some public sector organisations have also reported pay gaps, under regulations which make it mandatory for anyone with 250 or more workers to lodge annual figures by April. Leeds City Council pays women 13 per cent less than men, based on the midpoint of their salary range.

James Lewis, the council’s deputy leader, said: “Nearly a quarter of council staff work in school kitchens or in cleaning roles, and these roles do typically tend to be carried out women, so we recognise that the majority of our lower paid staff are women.”

Figures vary across the region, with Scarborough Council paying women 11 per cent more than men, and Harrogate four per cent more.

Commercial firms with a large male-biased pay gap include Tui Airways and easyJet, both with gaps of more than 45 per cent.