Children must be at the heart of every strategic decision that a school makes, as well as when a multi-academy trust (MAT) is created. Every MAT has to be able to tell parents that the education they are providing for their children is better than what went before. Unless our education system is capable of doing the best for children from the most challenging circumstances and backgrounds, it is failing in its central duty. I believe that academies and MATs, with their ability to support and improve underperforming schools and drive up pupil progress, are one of our system’s greatest resources.

In my role as national schools commissioner, I am seeing more and more examples of this working in practice. The very best practice enables schools to thrive in a long-term, sustainable and strategic way. The improvement in outcomes for disadvantaged learners has to be central to this, and the trusts that succeed do so by building the strategy across all of their schools. A strong example that I have seen recently on a visit to the North regional schools commissioner region was Bexhill Academy in Sunderland, part of WISE Academies. In an area of socio-economic disadvantage, in 2014 the school’s pupil outcomes at key stage 2 were 22 percentage points below national average. By 2016 outcomes had improved to the extent that Bexhill was 11 percentage points above the national average for reading, writing and mathematics combined for all pupils.

Part of this continuous improvement has been as a result of stronger leadership and governance. At Bexhill, both the chair and CEO joined the local academy board to provide stronger oversight and challenge. The trust also appointed a strong principal, and the CEO supported the trust’s teaching practice through introducing peer-to-peer support from other leaders in the trust. Sharing teaching and leadership capacity between schools where staff were deployed to work in more than one was also a factor in seeing outcomes improve quickly, as the modelling of trust practice became embedded in the work of the school.

We know that more needs to be done, and over the past year my team and I have been working to understand how we can best support trusts to continue to build their capacity to deliver school improvement. No one school or trust is the same and some areas of the country experience greater challenges, as identified by the education secretary’s opportunity areas. We need to challenge ourselves and the system to think about how we can work together to tackle this, improve outcomes for pupils despite these barriers, and then share what works widely.

Supporting school improvement

One of the ways we are seeking to support this is through the newly launched MAT Development and Improvement Fund (MDIF). The fund is for 2017-18 and aims to support trusts with a strong track record of building their capacity to deliver school improvement, leading to better outcomes for children. The fund will be targeted at more than 100 areas across England - parts of the country that were identified last year as having low education standards and less capacity to improve than other areas - to drive up standards and close the attainment gap for disadvantaged pupils. This could include helping a “good” or “outstanding” academy to expand to take on an underperforming school to ensure that best practice is embedded into that new school, or providing professional development training for teachers across a trust to enable them to identify and help close development gaps within classrooms.

All trust track records will be rigorously assessed as part of their application: this will include their school improvement model and evidence of the trust’s capacity to deliver further school improvement in both the schools they are already responsible for as well as those that will be joining. Funding will be prioritised to those trusts focusing on improving standards for disadvantaged students and those that are planning to take new underperforming schools into their MATs. As part of their application, trusts will be specifically asked to set out how they aim to deliver these priorities, and how this has been previously achieved in schools already in the trust.

Every headteacher, CEO and senior leader within the education system has a role to play in bolstering school improvement. Having a school improvement strategy that puts disadvantaged students at the heart of its ethos and takes us closer to giving every child access to the best possible education, regardless of circumstance, is essential. For those of you that are eligible, I would encourage you to apply to the MDIF to accelerate and extend the impact of your school improvement plans so that we improve the chances for more children across the country.

Applications are open until 26 November, and more information about the MDIF is available here.

Sir David Carter is the national schools commissioner

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