Features / Education
The rise of multi-academy trusts
The birth of academies in the early 2000s was meant to herald an age of independence, with individually-managed schools making bespoke decisions and responding nimbly, free from the shackles of their local authority.
Fast-forward 20 years and there seems to be something of an about-turn. The academies that now litter the education landscape have now clumped into bigger and bigger multi-academy trusts (MATS) organisations that manage the finance, curriculums and governance of groups of schools.
From MATs that ran five or six schools, we now have juggernauts.
is needed now More than ever
The latest of these is Amplify Education, formed from the merger of Cathedral Schools Trust and Trust in Learning Academies, and representing over 12,000 children across 21 schools.
One in five students in Bristol goes to a school it runs.
Henbury Court Primary Academy is part of Amplify Education
The growth of MATs is controversial, with some question whether such dominance is healthy or whether the model deprives schools of power.
“There’s a whole lot of myths people hold about multi-academy trusts that they’re all for profit, and that management skim off the top,” said Neil Blundell. “And all of those are absolutely rubbish.”
Blundell is the new CEO of Amplify and a staunch supporter of MATs going back years.
“The rationale is scale,” he said. “I talked yesterday to one of our suppliers and I know for a fact that I’m getting a better deal because of the scale of our schools. If you are buying three licenses instead of one license you are always getting a better deal.”
That approach applies to teaching too.
“In the multi-school movement we collaborate deeply between our schools,” he said. “Our curriculum leaders will get together and make sure they are sharing their best practice, and sharing their best work – which didn’t use to happen in the local authorities.
“In doing that, we aim to ensure that what is happening in the classroom is much stronger and we are not asking every single teacher to create their own resources.
For Blundell, having that extra layer of management means headteachers don’t have to be burdened so much with tasks that distract them from their core job.
“What we are always trying to do in our schools is making sure our headteacher and leaders aren’t distracted by the 101 things they need to do so they can focus on education; be better able to meet the needs of our children.” he said.
“That is the heart of what we do.”
But Blundell’s view is not universally shared. The National Education Union in particular has launched strong criticism at MATs, accusing them of failing to improve schools, while stripping their academies of decision-making power.
It also claims the model has caused “cuts made at school level while large amounts of cash (are) taken to fund the MAT’s central teams.”
The intention of MATs is to pool resources and raise standards
Councillor Christine Townsend, who chairs the council’s children and young people policy committee, has sympathy with this point.
“Some of the senior management in multi-academy trusts are on huge salaries,” she said, though she acknowledged that local authorities also employ additional staff to support schools.
“You get the money to educate the children so as much as possible needs to go into the school, to the frontline staff.
“Because it’s the frontline staff that make the difference on a day-to-day basis. They’re the ones that are interacting with the children; interacting with the parents.”
Townsend also worries about a lack of democratic oversight, with local authorities unable to influence schools, parents not necessarily involved in governance, and a fragmented education landscape that leaves unhappy families unsure where to turn.
Mostly, though, she thinks the debate isn’t that crucial.
“The style of governance is not in my view what makes a school successful,” she said. “You can find examples of good schools in local authority models just as you can in multi-academy trusts, and not good practice in both.
“What makes a school successful is how well it’s run and the practice within those schools.
“It’s about on the ground, in the classroom, what’s going on.”
All photos: Amplify
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