Back in May 2010, I arrived at the Department for Education, as a policy adviser full of excitement and possibility.
I had been a big fan of Labour’s academy programme and got frustrated at how it had stalled once Gordon Brown became prime minister.
In Michael Gove I saw a secretary of state who would push the accelerator; giving freedom to great schools and, more importantly, encouraging them to bring weaker schools into multi-academy trusts.
But none of us realised quite how fast that acceleration was going to be.
Unchecked growth
The financial incentive offered to schools was more than enough for many thousands of schools to leave their local authority.
Within two years, half of secondary schools were academies, and it was pretty clear the systems weren’t in place to manage such a radical shift.
Not long after I left the DfE, they hurriedly introduced Regional Schools Commissioners (RSCs) to manage the huge number of schools they were now responsible for but without thinking through what powers they needed to do this properly or how their role would fit in with others parts of the system like Ofsted.
In the 2016 White Paper, the plan was to put all of this on a proper footing, creating a coherent regulatory system for MATs and giving local authorities clarity about their role.
Unfortunately, Brexit got in the way and that White Paper was mostly canned. For the last six years, there has been little sense of direction.
Yet 80 per cent of secondaries and 40 per cent of primaries are now academies and the vast majority are in MATs.
In a report published today with the Institute for Government (IFG), I’ve set out the problems this is causing.
Complexity and confusion
First, it’s crazily complex.
Half of schools are in one system and half in another, with different rules. This is inefficient and confusing.
Moreover, the regulation of academies is a mess.
There is regulation of financial and governance matters by the Education and Skills Funding Agency and school level inspections by Ofsted. But nobody assesses the MATs’ educational contribution.
RSCs can re-broker individual schools that have failed their Ofsted but they cannot do anything to a MAT that is not adding any value.
This leads to the second problem. There are some great MATs, taking full advantage of their scale to provide excellent support and professional development across a group of schools, but there are too many poor MATs.
Many of these are small and simply don’t have the capacity to do much.
It’s hard for RSCs to do anything about these trusts because there are no set expectations on what MATs should do. Are they supposed to offer curriculum support? Or professional development? Or engage with the wider community? There is nothing to say they are.
This confusion over responsibilities also causes the third problem.
Local authorities still have a bunch of statutory duties, particularly around supporting vulnerable young people with special educational needs or disabilities or in alternative provision. But they don’t have the necessary powers to fulfil these duties.
A three-stage solution
In the report, I propose a three-stage approach to solving these problems.
First, academies need to be put on a proper statutory footing, rather than being managed via contracts.
A single regulator, at arms-length from politicians, should assess MATs against a clear framework of expectations, developed with the sector.
Secondly, local authorities should be given a stronger role in the system as defenders of children’s interests, particularly the most vulnerable, with the necessary powers to do this, including the right to set admissions policies for academies.
Once there is clarity over expectations and responsibilities then it makes sense to work with local authorities and MATs to move to an all-MAT system.
This should not be forced on anyone via an arbitrary deadline but encouraged through incentives and partnership.
For instance, local authorities could be given additional oversight powers and the right to integrate schools with other services once they no longer have any direct control over schools themselves (which might create conflicts of interest).
Finally, we should ensure that there is a safeguard against overmighty MATs ignoring the interests of individual institutions.
A legal mechanism should be introduced to allow schools to request a move to a different MAT if there are strong educational reasons for doing so.
Even if it wasn’t used much, it would ensure MATs pay attention to the concerns of school leaders, parents and local governors.
Taken together, these changes would put in place the system we should have started with back in 2010.
I still believe that MATs represent a good model for scaling good practice and development across a group of schools.
But like any system, we need clear expectations; alignment between duties and responsibilities; protection for the most vulnerable; and the right balance between top-down and bottom-up accountability.
By working together across the system we can make this happen.
Sam Freedman is a former senior policy adviser at the Department for Education and a senior fellow at the Institute of Government
