When MATs merge, schools should be given a choice of whether to remain
Several forces could lead to a phase of increased trust mergers and acquisitions. Schools should have a say on changing deals
Happy last week of term! It turns out that writing about teaching while teaching is tough - who’d have guessed? But here is a longer version of my recent article in Schoolsweek. Much as pedagogy is top of my mind right now, I’m still a nerd for structures - and yes, they do matter to standards. It’s not a binary choice. Since my article, a new Government Bill appears to be nudging the system in a direction I predicted and called for a few years ago. The article mentions the new Maintained Schools’ Collective. Whatever type of school or organisation you work in, if you believe that LA-maintained schools have an important role to play in a diverse system, I’d encourage you to sign up here.
In my lovely little Tower Hamlets maintained school, everyone has always got a lot of questions on their mind. This week, the key one is whether to have our Christmas dinner in Bethnal Green or Woodford. But, although I am not a party to SLT or governance discussions, my guess is that ‘shall we become an Academy or join a MAT?’ has never been further from anyone’s minds than now. I reckon this is true for maintained schools across England.
Now the election is over, this government has been prepared to make itself a little less popular with parts of the education community. Cutting Tory programmes such as the National Tutoring Programme and the National Citizens Service has given Labour’s education team chances to bare its more ruthless teeth. And in the various, light signals about school structures, it is clear that the secretary of state and others are pausing to ask serious questions around the efficacy and efficiency of the current system.
Fifteen anarchic years of academisation bribery, blackmail and hyperbole appear to be over. Regional Improvement Teams are being repurposed away from the civil service-anomaly tasks of marketing and cajoling schools into joining MATs. The Academy conversion and Trust capacity grants are being scrapped. And the government has said it is ‘open’ to the idea of Councils setting up new schools, and academies returning to Local Authority maintained status. Yet another set of exam results have shown that, surprise surprise, joining a MAT or becoming an Academy is no silver improvement bullet.
Academies and MATs are hardly waning – too many of them are vital, effective parts of our school system, and their collective voice is still loud and strong. But it may be time for maintained schools to wax a little. The timely creation of a Maintained Schools Collective is perfectly timed to ensure that these schools can have a voice at policy tables. These schools can show how they have autonomy to innovate with impact, and that are other ways to improve your own school, and collaborate with and support the improvement of other schools, beyond being part of a so-called ‘strong’ MAT.
Back in 2022, when full academisation was (yet again) being proposed, I wrote two long blogs in response – a diagnosis and a prognosis. I know I am blowing my own soothsaying trumpet, but it does feel like this section summarises where the current government’s head is at.
Any reform needs to go with the grain of a school system that is plural and diverse but not necessarily fragmented. Rather than force the pace of academisation, accept that the current plurality of school structures is likely to continue, and that there is no evidence-based rationale beyond policymakers’ need for ‘tidiness’ to change this. Yes, the current system feels a little messy, but we have always had a diverse school system, with a range of independent, faith and local authority schools, some of whom rely heavily on their local authority for improvement support, others who access and offer support more autonomously. The problem is not about a half-academised system. The problem is a system that appears unable to build sufficient capacity for school improvement (whether within or beyond a school), co-ordinate or allocate this capacity effectively so that the right schools receive the right support at the right time, and regulate so that those responsible for school improvement are also accountable. The challenge is to make the most of the patchwork of schools, groups and other improvement providers so that no school is left behind, informed by academy-agnostic evidence on the effectiveness of different partnerships and improvement models.
In this new policy space - a probable decline in the rate of schools interested in converting (and a busted inspection system and framework carries little weight to force sponsored the route onto many schools), and some serious value for money questions being asked about Trust-level spending and staff roles, my other prediction – the growth in Trust-to-Trust mergers and acquisitions – also looks more likely.
Although this may seem rational at Trust level, at school level it is problematic. It’s a bit like when a small business is sold to a slightly larger one, but then several acquisitions later it is now part of a massive company with an office halfway around the world. Whatever the ‘deal’ – financial, philosophical and operational - was at the point of conversion might look very different when your MAT merges with another.
My proposal is that at the point of merger, any school in either Trust has an ‘exit clause’ – the right to join a different Trust, become a stand-alone academy, or return to Local Authority Maintained status. How this can be actioned would be tricky – given that when a school joins a MAT it ceases to exist as a legal entity. But there will be legal ways around this – there always are. One option would be a parental referendum or right of veto if over, say, 75% of parents oppose it.
My idea is not a backdoor attempt to end academisation or to return schools en masse to under-resourced council maintenance. I have worked in one brilliant MAT and worked with many others. A total turn away from the current mixed model would be a timewasting error. But a merger can trigger a moment for a Trust to justify itself to a school community, and for that school community to reflect on what kind of company it wishes to keep, or be run by. Who knows, if my school knows it couldn’t join one MAT only to be acquired by another, it might even think about taking the academy route.