Over the past year, the number of academies in England has grown to 10,700, with trusts now running up to 90 schools each.

As many multi-academy trusts (MATs) continue to grow, what lessons are being learned, and how big is too big? And, while some trusts grow to giddy heights, why are others being left behind?

Tes has analysed government data to identify the fastest-growing MATs and spoken to leaders across the country to pinpoint the opportunities and key barriers to growth as part of our MAT Tracker project.

We have looked at the number of schools taken on by MATs over the past year - rather than the proportional increase in the number of schools they run - to capture the growth of a range of small, medium and large trusts.

Our analysis shows that 500 academies joined or formed trusts this year. The trust gaining the most schools year-on-year was the Derby Diocesan Academy Trust (DDAT), which nearly doubled from 17 to 33 schools based across the North West, East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber.

This was a result of two smaller trusts run by the same diocese - DDAT and DDAT 2 - merging.

Close behind is Cabot Learning Federation, based in the South West, which expanded from 21 to 34 schools.

Regional advisory board minutes from November state that the MAT recently “embarked upon an ambitious programme of growth” and its “future focus will be on a period of consolidation”.

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Sarah Lovell, Cabot’s chief operating officer, says the trust has grown in a variety of ways in the past 12 months, including via a merger, through absorbing a single-academy trust, and from a trust dissolving.

The “need to understand” the workings of ”different transfers” can create an operational “bump”, she says, adding that an in-depth understanding of how to onboard different kinds of schools has been essential.

“It does go back to induction and making sure that we do that really well,” she adds.

Meanwhile, the country’s largest MAT, United Learning, is edging ever closer to 100 schools after gaining nine in the past year: the trust grew to 89 academies in the period covered by our analysis and has since taken on an extra school.

United Learning is atypical: analysis by Tes’ MAT tracker team shows that the majority of MATs are much smaller, running between two and nine schools.

But there are many factors pushing trusts to get bigger, despite the desertion of the 2022 Schools White Paper ambition for all schools to be “in a strong MAT or with plans to join or form one” by 2030.

Support from being in a MAT

Some leaders point to schools wanting to be a part of their trust’s ethos and identity, as well as the support that a MAT can bring during more stressful periods, such as Ofsted inspections.

Larger trusts are also often seen as offering economies of scale, allowing leaders to build larger reserves and make decisions such as paying teachers at a higher rate than the national scale.

Speaking anonymously, one MAT leader tells Tes that the need to grow their trust keeps them “awake more than anything else”.

Department for Education data shows that between March 2023 and March 2024, the average MAT size grew from 7.6 to 8.2.

Recent findings from accountancy firm Kreston UK, shared with Tes, revealed that nine in 10 large MATs expect to grow further over the next two years.

The direction of travel seems clear - but is there anything that trusts with ambitious growth plans should bear in mind?

Maintaining ‘sense of identity’ harder as MATs grow

Mark Blackman, director of education consultancy Leadership Together, says that when MATs reach a scale of “anything post 50 schools, you have got to think carefully about the benefits of gain”.

“When you are approaching local authority size or beyond, [maintaining a] sense of identity is much harder,” he says.

Steve Taylor, Cabot’s chief executive officer, says the trust is still learning about “the best ways to make sure that the induction of new schools goes well” and how to reassure those who may have some “preconceptions around what trusts are and how they work”.

Of the 21 fastest growing trusts that Tes identified - defined as gaining five or more schools in the year - nearly half (11) started in March 2023 with fewer than 10 schools, five had between 10 and 19 schools and five had 20 schools or more.

More than a third (six) were Catholic or part of a Diocese. Church-led MATs have been pushed in recent years, including during a 2021-22 pilot, which resulted in 11 new trusts.

But despite increasing academisation and the growth of MATs in recent years, some leaders are struggling to expand, with many calling on the DfE to increase transparency around how growth decisions are made.

Primary sector offers most opportunities

As of earlier this month, the percentage of primary schools with academy status had grown to 44 per cent, while among secondaries this figure was much higher at 82 per cent.

The disparity can create challenges for trusts looking to expand.

Rob McDonough, CEO of East Midlands Education Trust, says the “rapid growth” the trust experienced in previous years has “significantly slowed”.

In Nottingham, where the trust is based, almost all secondary schools are now academised, so “there is virtually nobody else” to bring into trusts from that phase, McDonough says.

McDonough, whose trust has 13 primaries, nine secondaries and one alternative provision setting, says that while the trust has “strived to maintain a balance”, leaders are “cognisant of the fact that the major growth now is in the primary sector that’s left”.

‘Increasingly squeezed’ finances

The way MATs are funded does not make it easy to help a large number of such schools, according to several leaders who spoke to Tes.

Primaries “can quite often bring an awful lot of challenges and a lot of issues with not a lot of income” and you “have to look very closely with the primaries in terms of their building stock looking at their budgets, their finances, their size”, McDonough says.

His concerns are shared by Jonny Uttley CEO of 11-school trust The Education Alliance (TEAL).

In Yorkshire and the Humber, where Uttley’s MAT is based, “more and more” primary schools are looking to join trusts “at a time when their finances and trust finances have been increasingly squeezed”, he says.

Cabot’s Taylor agrees there is a “wariness” around the increasing unviability of primary schools.

However, Taylor thinks that trusts have a responsibility to “find solutions for some of those challenges”, adding that the trust’s mission is one of commitment to its communities.

Due diligence increases

Despite the optimism of some, many leaders are certain that increasing financial difficulties in the sector are slowing growth as trusts take more care to ensure they are not saddled with unexpected costs.

Samira Sadeghi, director of trust governance at the Confederation of School Trusts, said there is “enthusiasm for more schools to become academies and for trusts to gain additional resilience through growth”.

She said that trusts are more skilled at due diligence than in the very early days when some perhaps grew too quickly and added that this “can make finding the right fit trickier [but] also results in more thoughtful and strategic growth”.

But Ms Sadeghi also warned that MAT growth is being slowed due to “financial pressure on trusts and local authorities”.

“There is less headroom to absorb conversion costs and find savings and, as a result, the growth funds that are on offer from the DfE are heavily oversubscribed,” she added.

Extra checks now needed

Claire Robins, CEO of Scholars’ Education Trust, which grew from five to 11 schools between March 2023-24, says financial challenges have grown, and extra checks are now needed “to make sure that schools that are coming into our trusts are not in a financial position, meaning they might be a risk to the trust”.

This view was echoed by a trust CEO in the South West, speaking anonymously. Surveys carried out by the trust on one small school found “at least half a million pounds worth of urgent work that needs doing in this school”, the CEO says, adding: “We just can’t take that cost on.”

The DfE is working to resolve the question of who picks up the costs of that maintenance.

Blackman says he is seeing “an increased emphasis on high-quality due diligence”, particularly in small- to medium-sized trusts.

He thinks the uncertainty surrounding the teacher pay rise for 2024-25 will also make trusts “far more cautious” about growth. “The due diligence piece is much harder to do when you don’t know the deals being twisted in the background,” he says.

Academy support grant change ‘unsettling schools’

Decisions made in recent months by the DfE have also shaken some leaders.

Earlier this year, the DfE said that a £25,000 support grant to help with the academy conversion process would be paid only to schools approved to join or form a trust as part of a group of three or more schools from September.

Anne Dellar, CEO of the Oxford Diocesan Schools Trust (ODST), describes the move as unhelpful as it means trusts are “financially penalised” when responding “to individual needs or requests”.

“The idea that we have to collect schools into groups to get those funds doesn’t help our strategy of meeting local need,” she says.

The change has also “unsettled schools”, she says, saying that those keen to join ODST “have got the impression that it’s their responsibility [to find other schools]”.

Uttley agrees with Dellar: “The reality of lining up three schools is increasingly difficult,” he states.

TEAL is having to now make decisions about whether to delay the conversion of schools into the trust, Uttley says, adding that he “could be in a position where you tell a school that wants to join they need to wait a year, which is not a great message”.

“The assumption is it is easy to line up [schools] and also I think the decision appears to be more about cost saving than anything else,” he adds.

System is ‘a simple black hole’

Many leaders feel that an opaqueness in the system hinders opportunities for growth.

McDonough describes the system in a similar way, as “a simple black hole”.

While steps have been taken in recent years to improve the transparency of the regional director (RD) system, as well as how decisions around the growth of trusts are taken, they have not gone far enough, according to McDonough.

In fact, he thinks that the commissioning high-quality trusts guidance, in which the DfE finally set out its decision-making process for moving schools into MATs, “is so nebulous in its nature, it actually permits RDs to make a decision on whatever basis they want”.

Uttley also wants more transparency around RD decisions.

The uncertainty over regional decision-making, added to the current financial and policy climate, makes it difficult to predict exactly what the future might hold for MAT growth. Squeezed sector finances are clearly acting as both a push and pull factor for growth.

However, with academisation recently moving beyond the 50 per cent tipping point, and with many trusts continuing to see the benefits of taking on more schools, it seems likely the trends of recent years will continue.

The DfE has been contacted for comment.