One of the oft-cited benefits of multi-academy trusts (MATs) is that bringing schools together can enhance collaboration and cut costs by using the same systems and processes to drive efficiencies and improvements.

That’s a reasonable assumption on paper, but doing it in reality is more complex, with many questions to ask and answer.

Do you require a new school to move to your systems from the day they join or will you manage any changes slowly? What if a new school has a platform it claims is indispensable - do you allow it or force it to be discontinued regardless? How do you agree on a new platform for existing schools?

When to start the journey?

Perhaps the trickiest question, though, is simply when you should start consolidating - when you have three schools, five, 10? It seems there is no “right” answer.

“The optimal time for a MAT to start consolidating systems, software and policies across its schools depends on various factors, such as the size of the MAT, the existing infrastructure and the level of autonomy granted to individual schools,” says James Browning, chief operating officer at AET.

Rowena Hackwood, CEO of 26-school Astrea, concurs that each trust’s “right” time to do this will be different: “There’s no magic number of schools that should trigger consolidation in any given area.”

However, she says trusts should accept they will have to do this work at some point: “It would be hard to run a trust of 26 schools without a high degree of systems consolidation,” she says. But it is never too early to begin such work: “A three-school trust needn’t wait until it has grown if now is the right time to deepen alignment.”

Move early, move fast

It’s a view that Dr Nic Crossley, CEO of Liberty, a trust formed of three special schools, agrees with and says was a key component of how her trust was formed.

“We took the view that we wanted to have pretty much everything centralised as soon as possible because we needed to have consistency of practice, and the working environment was going to be the same for all members of staff,” she says.

This is particularly important as her three schools are geographically dispersed, she notes, so having clear insights into everything from finance and HR to appraisals, staff benefits and training platforms provides a solid starting point for school development.

Aligning groups of schools in this way may sound obvious but Crossley says that, for many trusts, rapid growth has meant little time - or desire - to think about consolidation.

“About 10 or 12 years ago, a lot of MATs were saying that schools could join them and bring their own ways of working, and keep their identity. I think that was down to the competitive nature of it, and wanting to try and build revenue.”

The pain of waiting

David Clayton, CEO of six-school Endeavour Learning Trust, says it is an issue he has witnessed, too: “Sometimes [trusts said] ‘let’s get our schools together and afterwards we can think about how we come up with our operating model’,” he says. “But that’s when tensions can arise.”

One trust that knows this issue well is the 40-school Diocese of Ely Multi Academy Trust, where CEO Adrian Ball admits that rapid growth had led to a patchwork of systems in use, which was causing issues.

“We have previously seen issues with a decentralised approach, including inconsistencies across schools and inefficient operating models,” he says.

However, the trust embarked on a plan to centralise numerous functions, such as finance, HR, facilities, governance and curriculum, as well as launching a central IT function.

Going through this change was not easy, he says - not least because many schools had joined with the belief that they could keep their own systems.

“Different approaches had become established at different schools over the years, and we were conscious that school leaders or governors may perceive these changes as limiting schools’ autonomy or going back on promises made when schools joined our trust,” he says.

Build buy-in and agreement

However, they pushed ahead, outlining to staff the “rationale, desired impact and method of implementation” for the changes - something Browning at AET agrees is important.

“It’s essential to build an understanding that change, including shifts in platforms, can be challenging,” he says.

“Providing adequate training and support, and emphasising the benefits of the changes, can help in gaining staff buy-in. In some cases, a phased approach to implementation may be more effective than a sudden overhaul.”

For Ball, this was done by giving headteachers “flexibility on when to implement changes within their schools, within a prescribed timeframe” and the necessary staff training as new systems were rolled out.

He says since doing this, there have been numerous practical benefits: “Our centralised HR and finance functions have helped us to better understand our workforce and close any gaps in understanding between these functions.”

Furthermore, he claims that standardising on educational platforms has made it easier to provide CPD and teaching support - boosting outcomes and Ofsted results, too.

“In August 2019, 48 per cent of our schools were rated ‘good’ or better by Ofsted and we were achieving well below the national average for progress in reading, writing and maths. We are now in line with national averages for key stage 2 progress, and 86 per cent of our schools are rated ‘good’ or better.”

Let’s share what matters

Nicole McCartney, director of education at Creative Education Trust, says such impact shows why centralised systems should be touted by MATs as an asset rather than a point of contention.

“Consolidation has become synonymous with ‘the big, bad multi-academy trust is coming to eat you alive’ but for me, what good MATs aim to do with consolidation is take away the headaches and back-end work,” she says.

To this end, she says trusts and schools must understand why consolidating systems is worth the effort: “What is critical is the ability to share best practice and share data. But without working on the same systems, that is really difficult because you’re not comparing like for like.”

One example she highlights is the work the trust undertook to establish a single management information system (MIS) - allowing it to better track and compare attendance and behaviour issues across schools.

“Being able to look across [the trust] at like-for-like issues because we’re all recording these things the same way means we’re able to ask, is this an issue for all of our secondaries nationally? Or is this just an issue in Great Yarmouth? Or is this such an issue in this school?”

She adds: “It’s really hard if you don’t have those systems to pull that information out.”

Get the right people in the room

As this work meant several schools had to migrate away from the MIS they were using, she says it was crucial that staff felt involved in the process - not only for cultural acceptance but also so the right product was chosen for the long term.

“A step that people often miss is asking ‘what do we want to do at the end of this?’, rather than just ‘what are we trying to fix that is problematic?’”

To achieve this, numerous stakeholders were brought together to evaluate products, including data managers, a vice-principal in charge of curriculum, a pastoral vice-principal who oversaw behaviour, a primary head and a secondary head, so that all views and requirements were considered.

“That meant we were making a far more informed decision,” she adds.

Crossley agrees that getting insight into what people need is vital to ensure any decision made will work - something she says is especially important when buying specialist tools.

“As a specialist trust, we have to be really particular and make sure the systems we’re implementing are correct for us because some systems are created predominantly for mainstream, and they don’t always work for what we want them to do,” she says.

“So we have done a lot of it work making sure it meets our needs in our context.”

The scale question

While she admits that doing this when the trust is small is easier in a practical sense, she notes that there are issues of scalability and relevance which have to be considered if the trust has growth plans.

“There is that pressure of what will happen? Will [the trust] grow? Fundamentally, the systems that we’re putting in place are there because we think they’re the best systems to be in place for our schools as we grow.”

Hackwood concurs: “Trusts with high growth expectations should consider procuring systems that suit their end state, not their starting point, so they make fewer changes over time.”

As part of this, she says it is important that suppliers are questioned about their ability to grow with a trust, how this will be managed and how contracts will be updated as required.

“The best suppliers understand the need to co-term contracts and to allow for transition periods, but the trust needs to be speaking to them early on.”

Robert Tite, chief financial officer at Inspiring Futures Through Learning (IFtL), a 16-school trust with primary and all-through schools in Milton Keynes and Corby, agrees that while suppliers should be aware of this, trusts should be proactive in discussing it, too.

“Typically, providers are equally eager to secure commitment and contracts, and are switched on to the dynamics of growth. They understand they need to offer value for money, so providing costings that take scale into consideration is something they would normally be open to discuss,” he says.

However, “understanding what happens for a new school joining, whether, say, systems or services can start before conversion and easily transfer to the trust post-conversion, is valuable”, he says.

Making things clear to new schools

As well as being clear with suppliers about changes, trust leaders say it is imperative that discussions with schools considering joining a trust are clear about any requirements to migrate to new systems.

“It is crucial to be clear about the operational aspects, including systems and policies, during onboarding,” says Browning.

“Transparency about the changes a new school will undergo helps to manage expectations and facilitates a smoother transition.”

Ball agrees, saying that if trusts are clear about this then centralisation “challenges” are reduced to “implementation issues, rather than philosophical debates”.

To this point, Crossley says her trust is “completely upfront that any school interested in joining” will have to move to its systems: “We can’t have different schools in silos,” she says.

Clayton says that not only is this sensible business practice from a management point of view but it also ensures that budgets go further.

“By managing resources more effectively, we’re more efficient at generating cost savings so that money can be directed to children in terms of education - so cost savings are a key reason to [consolidate].”

Obviously, to realise these savings as soon as possible would require schools to move to new platforms quickly. However, Clayton says it is better to create a “realistic project plan for each school” to avoid unnecessary stress.

“If you’ve got a school where only one system needs to change, then you might say, ‘let’s hit the ground running and get done from day one’,” he says.

“But if you’ve got a school where five or six systems need to change, you might say, ‘let’s stagger this because there’s a need for staff training and to ensure staff buy-in to the change’.”

A trust’s decision

This mixed approach is something Hackwood agrees makes sense both when onboarding new schools and when making any changes that will impact schools already in the trust.

“Some changes can just be announced and made - for example, switching expenses systems can be explained to colleagues on a side of A4,” she says.

However, for bigger projects, such as moving to a single MIS supplier, Hackwood’s trust takes it in stages - primary and special schools first, then secondaries - the benefits of which were two-fold, she says.

“It helped identify problems and fixes at a small scale before broadening out, but also generated more positivity from those using the system and so made it more attractive to later adopters.”

Tite, though, says that a similar project at IFtL was done in a different way: “A recent change to a trust-wide MIS system was planned so all schools changed to the system at once, and shared training and induction opportunities with the supplier as a collaborative group.”

However, he says an IT system roll-out was done on an individual basis to “minimise disruption and maximise benefit to each school”.

Ultimately, it seems that just as there is no “right time” for trusts to start consolidating platforms, there is also no single correct way of deciding how to do that consolidation. Each trust will have its own context, legacy and ways of working to guide these decisions.

What is clear is that having a well-communicated plan, which is adaptable and recognises the impact of any changes, is key to ensuring that a trust’s growth is not hindered by back-end logistics, but rather is empowered by it to help drive improvements, however they are envisioned.

Dan Worth is senior editor at Tes

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