Date: 27/05/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

There have been a number of times in recent years where it looked as if all schools were going to be pushed to become academies. Without a parliamentary majority, previous governments haven’t had the ability or support to make this happen, however, it looks as though this might be about to change…

It has become clear in recent speeches, interviews and publications that the Department for Education has a strong aspiration that all schools will join a strong MAT over the next few years. So what is a Multi Academy Trust and what are some of the advantages of joining?

Academies are state-funded independent schools and unlike most other types of schools, they are controlled by a Trust Board rather than the local authority. A Multi Academy Trust (like NCEAT) is a where a group of academies work in partnership with each other under a single Trust Board.

There are many advantages to working as a group of schools within a MAT, such as sharing costs for support services, staff working across schools, sharing facilities, joint curriculum planning and training. The core purpose is to advance education across the group of schools within the MAT by allowing school leaders to focus on the quality of education.

The Government has made it very clear that they see MATs as the best structure for schools going forward and they also want Trusts to grow so that they can get the greatest advantages from their size both in education and finance.

So what does this mean for NCEAT?

As a MAT, we’ve already seen growth having welcomed Warkworth C of E Primary School into the Trust last September. This has been a positive experience for both Warkworth and the Trust and has demonstrated how by working with schools who share our ethos and want all of their pupils, staff and communities to “let their lights shine”, we can continue to grow while maintaining our values and improving the education of all of our children, which is exactly what those of us working in education should be aspiring to do.