While academies operate within nationally set guidance, it is well understood that different regions follow their own decision-making processes and face distinct challenges.

Tes takes stock of how the North East of England’s multi-academy trust (MAT) sector is evolving and what is keeping leaders awake at night.

The backdrop to any analysis of the North East’s education system is the level of poverty facing many of its pupils. The North East has the highest rate of deprivation in the country, with 54.6 per cent of households classed as deprived in at least one of the criteria measured by the Office for National Statistics.

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson - who hails from the region along with schools minister Catherine McKinnell - has talked about her own family’s financial struggles growing up.

Recognising challenges is a ‘matter of urgency’

Schools North East, a charity representing schools in the region, produced a 2024 manifesto saying that “recognising the scale of the North East’s contextual challenges is a matter of urgency” and “any party serious about tackling long-term disadvantage and lack of opportunities must prioritise these perennial issues”.

There is certainly an obvious regional divide when it comes to results - the proportion of GCSE entries achieving a grade 7/A or above in summer 2024 was lowest in the North East, at 17.8 per cent compared with 28.5 per cent in London, which has the highest proportion.

The school estate is also “worse” than in other regions, according to Schools North East’s director Chris Zarraga.

• MAT growth decisions: Key trends from 2023-24
• Academy decisions by month: Regional advisory boards
• MAT Tracker: Mapping the country’s multi-academy trusts

Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education Trust asked - unsuccessfully - for this year’s exam students to be issued with centre-assessed grades after its Durham academy, St Leonard’s Catholic School, was one of those hardest hit by the reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete crisis.

Although some of the challenges facing North East pupils stem from beyond the school gates, advocates of the trust movement would likely see MATs as a potential source of support.

So, what shape is the North East MAT sector currently in?

North East has small number of schools

The North East region has the lowest number of schools (both academised and maintained) in the country - just 1,110, which is far below the average of 2,385.

Nearly four in five of its schools (58 per cent) are academised, above the national average of 52 per cent.

However, this varies by phase: academisation is above average among primaries and slightly below for secondaries.

The North East also has the fewest single-academy trusts (SATs) as a proportion of all trusts across all regions.

Academisation slow to take off

The patchiness of SATs across the country often reflects the differing speeds at which areas engaged with academisation: those going through the process later were often encouraged to join or form trusts.

And, historically, the North East was behind the curve when it came to academisation.

In 2014, a number of years after former education secretary Michael Gove passed legislation allowing for the rapid expansion of the academies programme, academies accounted for just 15 per cent of schools in the North East - compared with the national average of 19 per cent.

This regional gap only started to narrow in 2020.

Mr Zarraga said that the relationships that schools had with local authorities (LAs) were “much better” and so “you didn’t see any real driver there to push schools to academise”.

He said the make-up of schools in the North East - the size and location - meant the benefits of academisation “weren’t as obvious as they were in some areas”.

By 2021, academisation levels in the region had risen to 42 per cent, close to the 44 per cent national average.

A year later, as the government’s 2022 White Paper proposed all schools being in or planning to join “a strong MAT” by 2030, the North East had overtaken the national average.

This target was later dropped as planned legislation fell through.

Mr Zarraga said it was a surprise that “even when the government rhetoric of forcing schools to academise had died down, a lot of schools would look around them and see the benefits of academisation”.

Another factor is the high level of trust in CEOs in the North East, he said, as well as an appreciation of “how much funding has been pumped into the academy and the trust model”.

County Durham has most LA-maintained schools

While academisation has increased in recent years, the spread of LA-maintained schools varies across different areas in the North East.

The LA with the most remaining maintained schools is Country Durham, with 115 primaries and two secondaries, according to Department for Education data as of October.

Northumberland has 80 remaining primaries and three secondaries that are yet to be academised.

Some 46 LA-maintained primary schools remain in Gateshead and another 39 in North Tyneside.

Darlington has the fewest remaining primaries - just two - and Hartlepool and Middlesbrough both have six.

Academisation slowing

Despite the high number of maintained schools remaining, academisation in the North East seems to be slowing, according to a Tes analysis of regional advisory board decisions.

From September 2023 to April 2024, just 20 schools in the region were approved to become academies (including converter and sponsored routes), compared with the national average of 58.

Across the year, conversions in the North East made up just 3.8 per cent of the total nationally.

One trust leader describes some of the smaller trusts in the region as “on a cliff edge” as they are pushed to take on more schools or merge.

Going forward, with more than 400 primaries still to be academised but only 20 secondaries, one MAT leader says that primary-only trusts or those with primary expertise will be in a stronger position to grow.

Catholic diocese academy push

The later surge in academisation can in part be attributed to the Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, which is based in Newcastle upon Tyne.

In December 2019, the Bishop and the diocese directors agreed a strategic plan for Catholic education in the area, under which all schools would convert to academy status.

The plan was for all 156 schools to be within one of four Catholic education trusts (Bishop Bewick Catholic Education Trust, Bishop Chadwick Catholic Education Trust, Bishop Hogarth Catholic Education Trust and Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education Trust) by July 2022.

Analysis of government figures reveals that as of September this year, there were five schools remaining in the diocese that were yet to be academised.

One school will soon join a trust. The other four, one MAT leader in the region claims, decided they did not want to academise - a decision the diocese does not seem to have fought.

However, it is hoped that the remaining schools will academise in the future, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle told Tes.

The diocese believes its ”historic mission of providing high-quality education” is ”best achieved at the present time by our schools attaining academy status”, they added.

Following the push from the diocese, the big players in the region include the four MATs into which the Catholic schools were designated, as well as North Tyneside Learning Trust, which has 35 schools in the region.

The 38-school Nicholas Postgate Catholic Academy Trust has 25 of its schools in the North East, according to DfE data, while the 40-school Outwood Grange Academies Trust has seven schools in the area.

Two North East trusts were found in a recent Tes analysis to be in the fastest-growing 20 MATs in the country. These included Lingfield Education Trust, which grew from nine to 17 schools in the year to March 2024 and now runs 19 academies.

The other is New College Durham Academies Trust, which has grown from two to seven schools since March 2023.

Academy structures and regional directors

Academisation of the region is ultimately overseen by regional directors and their teams.

Until 2022, when the regions were revised - and regional school commissioners became known as regional directors - the North East did not have its own delegation.

Instead, the area was encompassed into the North of England, running all the way from the Scottish border down to Lancashire and West Yorkshire, and East Midlands and the Humber.

One leader in the North East told Tes that the change had been positive for the region, with LAs working well together.

While leaders say they are generally happy with their regional director, Katherine Cowell, they tend to repeat concerns raised by others across the country around a frustrating lack of transparency in the way decisions are made, as well as a lack of consistency for MATs with schools across multiple regions.

Tes previously revealed that the former schools minister Robin Walker had described the regional director system as “a black box”.

One MAT leader in the North East raised concerns about changes to intervention powers, which they feel has left those in charge without levers to remove underperforming schools from trusts.

Future direction of academisation

The future direction of academisation policy from a new Labour government, whose school standards adviser has claimed to be “agnostic” about school structures, remains unclear.

As the government irons out the details of its reform of the school system, leaders say they have no inkling of what is to come, with some also toying with the idea that reforms could lead to LAs’ influence creeping back.

“Everybody would like clarity about where we go from here”, Mr Zarraga said, pointing out that different funding streams existed for different types of trusts and schools, some of which are seen as difficult to access.

“We’ve got a dual system that’s operating, which is obviously increasing the bureaucracy and the costs,” he warned.

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