The government’s schools White Paper sets a clear direction of travel for the sector: every school should be in a “high-quality” trust.

Tes analysis has previously shown it could take at least 16 years for this ambition to be realised.

But the biggest unanswered question is how the government expects to get there.

How will trusts and schools be persuaded to take the leap? Tes has spoken to leaders to find out.

Bringing all schools into trusts

Multi-academy trusts are growing: England’s largest, United Learning, recently announced a merger with 13-school Authentic Education that would take it to 109 schools.

For some trust leaders, taking on extra schools can offer stability amid rising financial pressures.

However, nearly one in five local authority-maintained schools (17.9 per cent) were in deficit in 2024-25.

When a maintained school with a healthy surplus joins a MAT, that surplus is transferred to the trust. If a maintained school joins with a deficit, the trust is likely to inherit that as well.

Tom Campbell, chief executive of E-ACT, which runs 37 schools, says taking on schools with a financial deficit is not necessarily a barrier, and cites the trust’s mission to improve the outcomes of disadvantaged children.

Marc Doyle, chief executive of QUEST Trust, which has four primaries and one secondary, says growth should be “purposeful and sustainable”, and not simply about getting bigger.

A large MAT, Campbell says, can model whether a school could be run more efficiently with a centralised team, such as shared finance and estates expertise. This means a school in deficit may still be viable within a trust, he argues.

David Clayton, CEO of Endeavour Learning Trust, which runs six primaries and four secondaries, echoes this, adding that practical barriers such as finances can “often be overcome or mitigated”.

Equally, Doyle says trusts have to be honest about their capacity to support a struggling school, especially if financial deficits and estate problems could divert attention and resources away from pupils already in the trust.

Funding incentives

However, the costs of expansion can also be a deterrent for trusts, especially after the axing of several funding streams such as the £25,000 academy conversion grant, which was scrapped in 2025.

Mark Blackman, director of consultancy Leadership Together, says trusts now bear most of the costs of expansion themselves.

The costs of legal and contractual work, plus charges from local authorities and dioceses, range from £7,000 to £15,000 per school, he says.

Campbell argues that the Department for Education could create a national service to handle parts of the legal and administrative process.

‘The costs of bringing in schools can be a particular barrier where they are smaller or have run up deficits’

Some of these costs can be recovered within a few years through “more efficient operations”, says Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts (CST).

However, “they can be a particular barrier where schools are smaller or have run up deficits as maintained schools”, she says.

The CST would welcome financial support from the DfE to help schools and trusts with some of the financial hurdles of conversions.

The small-school dilemma

Indeed, many small primaries would remain difficult to convert unless the government offered a financial incentive, Blackman argues.

There are around 5,000 primary schools with one-form entry in England, based on Tes estimates of school-level pupil numbers.

There were also 2,351 local authority (LA) schools with fewer than 120 pupils in 2024-25, including 1,705 primaries.

Although these schools are central to their local communities, they are hard to sustain financially and may be harder for trusts to support.

Doyle says that, for trusts, rural and isolated schools could pose additional challenges in staffing, recruitment, leadership and the practicalities of working closely together. But these are exactly the schools that would benefit most from being in a trust, he argues.

Geographical clusters

Sometimes a converter academy will offer the chance for a trust to build within an existing footprint.

Claire Heald, chief executive of The Cam Academy Trust (12 primaries and seven secondaries), says leaders want schools close enough to be easily reached, and in communities that the trust already understands.

Schools are also more attractive for Cam if they sit within existing feeder patterns between primary and secondary, Heald adds.

The White Paper suggests that national MATs can set up “local hubs or clusters”, and some trusts look for schools within their existing geographical area.

E-ACT operates its 37 schools across eight of the nine English regions. Campbell says the most effective support comes where a trust has enough schools in one area to create local hubs.

Through this model, staff can be shared more easily, and support for special educational needs and disabilities can be pooled, says Campbell.

Avoiding takeovers

There has been a 22 per cent drop in the number of trusts since 2016, and, at the same time, the combined share of trusts with more than six schools has risen from 6.6 per cent to 32.3 per cent.

This trend may put pressure on medium-sized trusts to take on more schools, rather than being absorbed by a bigger trust later.

Heald has seen this pattern in Cambridgeshire, where successful trusts grew, and smaller groups joined larger ones. In January, her trust merged with a smaller five-school trust in the area.

The White Paper does not define an ideal trust size, but it clearly favours groups that are large enough to improve schools, manage estates and stay financially resilient - and this is already apparent in current patterns.

Why would a school join a trust?

Some of the schools most attractive to trusts could also be the least likely to join one.

More than 800 maintained schools had revenue reserves worth more than 20 per cent of their annual income in 2024-25, Tes analysis found.

There were also 66 LA-maintained secondary schools with more than £1 million in reserves and higher-than-average Attainment 8 scores.

For schools like this, the obvious question is what problem a trust is meant to solve.

‘I don’t know what a trust could offer us that a partnership doesn’t already offer us’

James Searjeant, headteacher of Wyborne Primary and Nursery School in south-east London, says his school has a “strong and constructive” relationship with its local authority and already collaborates extensively with other schools.

He says support around SEND, safeguarding and school improvement is strong, and much of that collaboration does not depend on formal structures.

Anthony Smith, headteacher of Parmiter’s School, a single-academy trust, echoes this, saying his school already works closely with others through the Watford Partnership and wider local networks.

“I don’t know what a trust could offer us that a partnership doesn’t already offer us,” Smith argues.

Pressure from dioceses

But other schools may face little choice - for example, some faith schools.

There are just over 10,000 LA-maintained schools in the system, and 2,506 are Church of England schools - including 2,465 primaries and 30 secondaries.

More than half of all Catholic schools are already academised, but there are still around 800 LA-maintained settings, mostly primaries.

Church of England MATs allow non-church schools to join, whereas Catholic MATs are comprised exclusively of Catholic schools.

Paul Barber, director of the Catholic Education Service, says that “the vision of every diocese has long been for all Catholic schools to become academies”.

This allows for curriculum continuity for pupils from primary into secondary, collaboration with other schools in SEND provision and chaplaincy, he says.

Barber adds that the decision for a Catholic school to academise only comes after “a full and thorough consultation” with school leaders, teachers, parents and its governing body.

However, the local bishop appoints the majority of governors on a school board, and if the diocese’s vision is for every school to academise, individual schools may have little choice.

Growing responsibilities

Other pressures for schools to join a trust could be more indirect.

The White Paper, SEND reforms, new estate management requirements, the curriculum and assessment review and the new Ofsted framework all point to rising expectations for schools. Large trusts argue that they often have the capacity to address these changes.

And if local authority capacity weakens as more schools join trusts, the pressure on LA schools to transfer could grow.

Economies of scale

Searjeant says the main attraction of joining a trust would be access to specialist expertise in areas such as budgets, buildings, staffing, SEND and school improvement.

Larger trusts can also reduce costs by buying resources for their schools in bulk and securing better deals with suppliers, such as catering and supply teacher agencies.

These people and systems may be difficult for a single school to organise and afford on its own, and Heald says schools often approach Cam seeking greater financial stability and more support with estates and HR services.

Capital funding

There could also be more direct financial incentives.

While both local authorities and trusts receive capital funding allocations, trusts are often better able to deploy that funding directly to schools, Blackman says.

Where councils hold capital funding across all their schools, it can be harder to get work approved and completed.

There are also clear policy advantages for larger trusts, Blackman argues.

One example of this, he says, is the recent move to allow schools in smaller trusts to access capital funding without going through the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) bid process. Larger trusts already benefit through the direct School Condition Allocations.

Few CIF bids were successful, he adds, meaning that the system had long favoured those with direct capital allocations.

Assuring autonomy

Could trusts do more to reassure maintained schools that they will retain sufficient autonomy if they join?

Joan Deslandes, headteacher of Kingsford Community School in East London, says some trusts are too centralised, with too little faith being placed in school leaders and local governors. Schools need stronger legal protections over autonomy if they join a trust, she adds.

Her school’s relationship with its local authority has deteriorated sharply over the past 18 months, she says, and for the first time she has begun seriously considering joining a MAT.

Even so, she says her school already benefits from strong governance, a powerful network of maintained heads through Newham Learning, and the freedom to make decisions locally.

So, although the pull towards a MAT is real, she worries about losing the freedoms she has been granted by the council, as her school is in one of the strongest financial positions in the country and has much higher than average GCSE attainment.

What happens next?

The government’s commitment to a fully trust-led system is uncertain - it hasn’t set any deadlines, and it has made it clear that schools will not be compelled to join a trust. This is unlike previous Conservative governments, which were ideologically aligned with the academy movement.

At the moment, the schools with the clearest reasons to join a MAT may be those under the most financial and operational pressure, but they can also be the ones that trusts are least likely to take on.

And the schools most attractive to trusts may be the ones with the least incentive to move.

If the government wants more trusts to take on schools facing challenges, it may need to offer funding or practical support, or apply political pressure.

If it wants more schools to join trusts, it may need to make the benefits of joining clearer or make staying outside the system less attractive.

Unless the government can address both sides of the equation, its ambition may never be realised.