I was recently reminded of Henry Kissinger’s famous remark: “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?”
The point was that among Western Europe’s patchwork of nations, the legend of US foreign policy couldn’t discern where the buck stopped. He needed one number to dial in a crisis and that number was not forthcoming.
This almost certainly apocryphal story popped into my head while attending the summer conference of Freedom and Autonomy for Schools - National Association, a fairly stuffy, and secretive, membership organisation of headteachers committed to promoting school autonomy.
Why? Because Fasna’s new (ish) chief executive, Leora Cruddas, revealed her plans to rethink the organisation as the trade association for multi-academy trusts. It will, if Cruddas gets her way, become the Confederation of School Trusts (CST), and MATs themselves will be members.
As it stands, when the latest crisis befalls the academy system, the education secretary could not unreasonably ask: “Who do I want to call if I want to speak to MAT-land?”
Cruddas wants the answer to this question to be the CST.
And it’s not like there’s a shortage of crises. Most months in these past couple of years have seen at least one scandal relating to executive pay, off-rolling, gaming or financial mismanagement hit the sector. And then there’s the constant accusations of secrecy.
Obviously, there’s a lot more to what Cruddas and her supporters want to do with the reborn Fasna (model best practice, build networks and so on), but mainly they want to coordinate the sector so it will speak with one voice to both government and the other actors in education. Up until now it has been easy to characterise it as catty and atomised.
MATs’ autonomy is under threat
To make matters more pressing, it is becoming increasingly clear that MATs are no longer the flavour of the month in the Department for Education. I’ve written before about how few ministers have any political skin in the current academies model, but I understand that academies are increasingly seen as an irritant, and one that must be reined in.
From what I’m hearing, politicians and civil servants are getting increasingly bored with this litany of controversies - and, more pertinently, they don’t have much power to do anything about them. They can’t, for example, force a MAT CEO to resign, or another to take a pay-freeze. They worry deeply about off-rolling, too.
In short, MATs’ much-cherished autonomy is under threat.
Some MATs are truly brilliant and try to do the right thing by their students and communities, and there are many positives to the schools’ landscape as it is currently developing. But there are few people making this argument at a systemic level, at least certainly not with formal credentials to speak on behalf the sector.
For example, as a journalist, I would love to know how the sector itself believes it can change so as to avoid a repeat of the recent scandal involving the collapse of Wakefield City Academies Trust. I have no doubt Damian Hinds would, too.
But getting MAT CEOs aligned, agreed and working together would appear to be rather akin to herding tigers (they are, after-all, Big Beasts).
For example, it is unfortunate that the reimagining of Fasna is not the only show in town. Ferreting away in a backroom of a legal firm in central London, one can occasionally find the Queen St Group (QSG) of MAT CEOs. Membership is informal, meetings are unminuted and it doesn’t even officially exist. Designed to bring together these Big Beasts on areas of common concern, the secret nature of these meetings in fact only goes to reinforce the preconceptions of the many critics of the MAT system.
Moves are afoot, I’m told, to persuade the QSG to fold itself into Cruddas’ CST, and this is to be welcomed. But it can’t happen fast enough. The time for backroom deals is surely over.
If not, the politicians will continue to circle.
Ed Dorrell is head of content at Tes
