Nearly one in five councils have expressed interest in setting up local authority-established multi-academy trusts (MATs) as part of a trial planned for this year.
As part of its Schools White Paper earlier this year, the Department for Education (DfE) invited councils to register an interest in being involved in a “test and learn” pilot exercise to help develop council-established MATs.
Tes revealed eight of the councils that had applied last month, but now the DfE has revealed that 29 registered interest by its July deadline.
In June, former education secretary Nadhim Zahawi told the Local Government Association (LGA) conference that there had been an “overwhelming” interest from councils in establishing MATs.
There are currently over 150 local authorities with responsibility for education in England.
The DfE now says that it will “carefully test the scheme via a limited number of successful applications” this year, although it said it doesn’t yet know how many will be successful, or when it will announce the chosen councils.
The department also revealed today that there are now more than 10,000 academy schools open in England as a result of more than 100 new academies converting yesterday, Thursday 1 September.
It said that this represents well over half of all students, with more than four in five secondary schools now converted.
And the DfE also said it will announce details of a “multi-academy trust leadership development expert advisory group” later today, aimed at advising the DfE on the most effective and efficient means of developing MAT CEOs.
The group will be comprised of individuals with expertise in school and business leadership, which, the DfE said, will support its policy of all schools being part of a strong MAT, or having plans to join or form one, by 2030.
‘Test and learn’
When the DfE launched its plans for a test-and-learn project earlier this year, it said that all maintained schools (primary, secondary, special or alternative provision) and academy trusts were eligible to be part of a local authority-established MAT.
The department also said it expects council-established trusts to be small initially, with fewer than 10 schools or 7,500 pupils, adding it would manage the size of new trusts to ensure they were strong before considering growth.
It has said its starting position will be that maintained schools should, where possible, join strong MATs rather than form new ones, whether established by a local authority or not.
Education secretary James Cleverly said that it was “great” to mark the new school year with a milestone of 10,000 academies being open in England.
He added: “The academies programme has been transforming children’s education for over a decade now and I look forward to building even more momentum so all schools can join strong academy trusts in the coming years.”
