Doubt has been cast on plans to steer multi-academy trusts (MATs) towards running 10 schools, with researchers saying the government’s evidence to justify the policy is “not sufficient”.
Monday’s Schools White Paper said the Department for Education expected that most trusts would “be on a trajectory” to reaching this size.
The paper added that trusts “typically start to develop central capacity when they have more than 10 schools” and that this scale allows them to “be more financially stable, maximise the impact of a well-supported workforce and drive school improvement”.
But the evidence it has provided to back up its claims has been criticised by experts.
In a document published alongside the White Paper, the DfE said MATs are, on average, “less likely” than single school trusts to have a current or predicted deficit, qualified accounts or financial concerns. It adds: “On all those measures, trusts of 15-plus academies outperform other trusts on average.”
But a senior researcher at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) has said there is “no conclusive evidence” that MATs are more effective than maintained schools or single school trusts at managing their finances and that the DfE’s claims were “difficult to evidence”.
Speaking about the claim that trusts of 15-plus academies outperform other trusts on average, Jenna Julius, a senior economist at the NFER, said: “Families of schools are able to pool their finances - especially in larger trusts - making it difficult to observe the real circumstances of an individual MAT school and compare that with single trusts or maintained schools. You aren’t comparing like with like.
“As such, this statement alone is not sufficient evidence to rationalise a policy calling for MATs to include more than 10 schools.”
She added: ”More transparency in this area would enable more detailed research and analysis on this topic.
“Certainly, at the moment, there is no conclusive evidence that MATs are more effective than local authority maintained schools or single school trusts at managing their finances.”
There are currently 5,766 academies that belong to trusts with 10 or fewer schools, but only 4,121 in trusts with more than 10 schools, according to the DfE document.
The Education Policy Institute (EPI) think tank said its previous research, looking at the impact of Covid on school finances, had found bigger trusts were not always more resilient in the face of financial pressures when all of their academies’ finances come under pressure at once.
Research published by the organisation in its 2020 report Assessing Covid-19 cost pressures on England’s schools showed that a greater proportion of academies (53 per cent) expected to have a deficit by the end of the financial year in comparison with local authority maintained schools (44 per cent).
According to the EPI, the research also suggested: “At least in terms of in-year budgets, being in a larger school group has not necessarily offered the same protection against running a deficit.”
It added: “This may be explained by the fact that all schools within a group would be incurring additional costs, thus reducing the capacity to transfer funding between schools in a trust in response to need.”
The DfE also suggested evidence for larger academy groups being stronger could be found in Ofsted’s 2019 report, Multi-academy trusts: benefits, challenges and functions.
The report says other advantages for MATs include the ability to collaborate on curriculum planning, as well as opportunities for staff to move between schools.
The report concludes: “If a MAT is too small, it can be hard for it to maximise the advantages of MAT status through economies of scale and central support and challenge”.
Further research from EPI published in its 2019 paper, Teacher recruitment, progression and retention in multi-academy trusts, found that, in general, larger academy trusts have a higher turnover of staff than smaller trusts and local authority maintained schools.
The report adds: “There is no real sign that, when they do leave, they are going to another school within the trust; nine in 10 school moves are outside of the group.”
One of the flagship policy announcements in Monday’s Schools White Paper was that by 2030, all schools should be in a “strong” MAT or with plans to join or form one.
The DfE has stressed that the aim for these trusts to be on a “trajectory” towards having 10 schools or 7,500 pupils is a long-term aim and it does not expect MATs to suddenly grow to this size.
The DfE says it will ensure that MATs are only asked to expand when they have the capacity to do so - and decisions will be based on what is best for individual schools and the pupils they serve.
