FEATURE: MULTI-ACADEMY TRUSTS
Four MAT trends to watch out for in 2022
I
n our third feature this month, we’re delighted to hear from Will Jordan, Co- Founder of IMP Software, who casts his eye over the multi-academy trust landscape and looks at what recent government announcements might mean for schools still undecided about the benefits of launching or joining a MAT.
So, the new Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for the School System) Baroness Barran has stressed the Department for Education (DfE) continued vision of all schools joining MATs. In a recent media interview, the Minister with responsibility for academies and multi-academy trusts also took the opportunity to urge strong maintained schools to launch MATs and revealed how the government is investigating different operating models to see which produce the best outcomes.
It is clear that greater academisation, growing MATs and some through an increase in merger approvals, will be a major part of the sector landscape in 2022 – and whilst the past 21 months have shown how difficult it is to make predictions with any certainty, there are four issues and trends we should watch out for in the New Year.
1. Evolution in MAT formation policies It may be a coincidence, but a week before Baroness Barran’s interview and what Schools Week described as a “charm offensive” at the Schools and Academies Show, the DfE released new research which found that the rate of academy conversions in the next three years will be “limited to a steady rate” and is “unlikely to increase” without any change to current policies. The study, titled ‘Schools’ views on the perceived benefits and obstacles to joining a multi-academy trust’, reported that the vast majority of recent converters – 82% of primary and 74% of secondary schools – said the overall impact of joining a MAT has been positive. However, headlines around 60% of primaries and 70% of secondaries finding the process “challenging” and only 13% of local authority primaries and 22% of local authority secondaries considering converting to academy status, provide ammunition for harder policies to be introduced on joining MATs. Additionally, two thirds of standalone academies said that not joining a MAT was an “active decision” from the school.
2. Providing evidence that MATs work “There is potential to increase awareness and raise expectations of these benefits amongst schools that are not part of MATs”, says the same DfE research. Whilst recent convertors reported issues around dealing with objections from parents or staff, difficulty adapting to new processes, increased workload, reduced control over finances, reduction in autonomy, taking longer to get things done and volume of paperwork, the advantages of conversion were seen to outweigh these. It adds that if the DfE wants to implement its vision of having all schools in a strong MAT then “evidencing the positive experiences of schools in MATs will be critical”.
Through the 120+ MATs that we work with, we see the many benefits that can be achieved by working more collaboratively across a school Trust; both in terms of strategic financial management as a larger, integrated entity as opposed to an aggregation of individual schools, along with the ability to allocate resources based upon need rather than a formulaic funding formula, which is a route that more Trusts are adopting to ensure they can offer the right support at the right time, which will vary over time.
30
www.education-today.co.uk
January 2022
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
