Where is the English Education System Heading? An Insight into the Future of Multi Academy Trusts

At the Foundation for Education Development summit, which took place at the beginning of March, Secretary of State Gavin Williamson restated the importance for schools to build partnerships and join a bigger family, that is, to become part of a Multi Academy Trust. ‘Multi Academy Trusts’, he maintained, ‘are powerful vehicles for improving schools by sharing expertise, working collaboratively and driving improvements. It is living proof of the old adage, a problem shared is a problem halved’. He added that the Government expected a greater number of schools to join a MAT by 2025 and that they were actively looking at how to facilitate this process. Speaking to Schools Week later in the month, Mr Williamson clarified that the DfE has currently no plans to change the legislation in order to force schools into MATs. The pandemic, the Secretary of State continued, has shown how beneficial it is for schools to be part of a family and to work together. The reticence to compel schools to change status appeared to be shared by Baroness Berridge, the Schools Minister, who also stated in a meeting with CST members that there were no plans to do so.

Mr Williamson’s statements have renewed the debate about the purpose and scope of large MATs. In a recent article on Schools Week, Emma Knights, Chief Executive of the National Governance Association, raised a number of important issues. The article, it is worth mentioning, is based on the report MATs Moving Forward: The Power of Governance released by the National Governance Association in March 2021. In her piece, Knights pointed out that public policy leaders have dedicated little attention to the pros and cons of having trusts of different size. It is evident that the establishment of MATs is the DfE’s favoured solution to school improvement, but, she warned, the Government has not set out a clear vision since Nicky Morgan’s white paper Education Excellence Everywhere in 2016. Knights then underlined that larger MATs are less likely to have committees from each academy on their boards. This might lead to a widening of the distance between trusts and the local communities they are supposed to serve. Do we intend MATs to be fixed entities or incubators of success? Is the expansion of larger trusts jeopardising the smaller ones, often overlooked and conceived as destination for brokered and re-brokered schools? Does the DfE aim to turn every MAT into a large MAT? These are some of the questions that Knights posed at the end of her article.