The growth and shape of the academisation of schools is at a “tipping point” and there needs to be a “more mature conversation” about how it develops, trust leaders have warned.
Speaking at the Schools and Academies Show (SAAS) in Birmingham, Rowena Hackwood, chief executive officer of the 26-school Astrea Academy Trust, called for fresh talks over the direction of policy.
She said the conversation was needed partly because it had become unclear whether a “super localised model” for MATs was emerging as a preferred blueprint to national trusts.
The Department for Education recently revealed that it is working on plans to set out trust growth, which it wants to see across the whole country.
It also set out new guidance over the summer revealing how it will assess MAT performance and the criteria regional directors will use to evaluate MAT growth from next year.
But Ms Hackwood, who sits on the regional advisory board for Yorkshire and the Humber, said this week that the sector needs to have a “more open and more honest” conversation about “how we want to see the sector shaping”.
The Schools White Paper, published in March 2022, set out plans for all state schools to be in or moving towards being part of a “strong” MAT by 2030.
Although this target was left in limbo after the scrapping of the Schools Bill, the Confederation of School Trusts (CST) said that it understood the DfE remains focused on ensuring all schools can benefit from the support of a trust.
But Ms Hackwood, who was speaking as part of a panel discussion on the evolution of MATs, said that this policy has led to every small trust acquiring schools to aspire to grow to around 15 to 20 academies, but there are “not enough schools in the system to go around to make that a mathematical possibility”.
She said: “I think we’re at a really important tipping point in terms of our collective thinking about how we want to see the sector shaping and I think we need to have a more open and more honest conversation about that.
“We need to have a lot more mature conversation about how we want to see our localities shape.”
Super localised MAT model
The MAT leader said that there was an important question about whether the academies sector is moving towards a “super localised model...rather than a national model”.
She added that there might be a move towards “shared back offices” across MATs, which could be beneficial to smaller academy chains.
Wayne Norrie, chief executive officer of the 37-school Greenwood Academies Trust, said did he did not think there was a shift to a local versus national MAT system emerging.
But, he said he thought that a “tipping point” had been reached “where we need to sit down and look at where MATs operate across the country to see if there’s a better way to group schools”.
Meanwhile, John Camp, chief executive officer of the 13-school Compass Partnership of Schools and president of the Association of School and College Leaders, agreed that “clarity” is needed about the “direction of MAT development and how this will influence local and national decisions”.
Complaints system
The Astrea chief also called for the streamlining of a complicated complaints system, amid a rise in parental complaints in the wake of a breakdown of parent-school relationships post-Covid.
It follows a warning from the chief executive of the CST, Leora Cruddas, that schools are facing a “rising tide of mistrust” from the public following the pandemic.
A report published by Public First earlier this year found a “profound breakdown in parental attitudes” to the idea of full-time school attendance in the years since the Covid pandemic.
‘Complexities around complaints’
Responding to a question about whether she felt the ESFA provided the right balance between autonomy and guidance, Ms Hackwood said that “complexities around complaints” was an issue.
She said that MAT leaders had recently seen a “massive rise in complaints” that were “hard to deal with” due to them being submitted to local authorities, ESFA, Ofsted, the DfE, the local press and MPs “without actually often going to schools”.
Ms Hackwood said she would like to see some help and support with streamlining what can be a very complicated situation.
Another leader agreed that the current system is inefficient. The chief executive, who asked to remain anonymous, told Tes that their trust had recently had to send four letters about the same unattributed complaint, which had taken up a huge amount of management time.
Housekeeping post-Bell review
Another MAT leader called for more to be done following the Sir David Bell review, which led to the DfE’s system for overseeing schools undergoing a major shake-up.
Chief executive of E-ACT Tom Campbell, who was also speaking at SAAS as part of the panel on the evolution of academy trusts, said he thought there was “still some housekeeping to do” after the Bell review.
Mr Campbell said he had “frustration” around the “man-marking of trust boards” by groups with oversight, such as the DfE regions group and the ESFA.
He said that, sometimes, trustees on the E-ACT board feel “that they’ve not been given the freedom and the power to govern because there are other people with a view that may or may not be different to theirs”.
“So I still think there’s probably some housekeeping to do post-Bell review where the work of the DfE regions group and the work of the ESFA were reorganised,” he added.
And Mr Campbell said that a “threat” to the system - especially for MATs working across regions - is the lack of clarity over whether each region is carrying out work to the same process and standard as each regional director “does things differently”.
He added that this leads to “various interpretations of what the process should be”.
The DfE has been approached for comment.
