To despise MATs (Multi Academy Trusts)

Since DC's primary school joined a MAT they got:

Big fence & gate which is locked during the day & again after school so no kids can get out & no strangers can get in.

New roof (they had run out of buckets it had so many leaks. Staff room washing up bowl was even repurposed.

New IT server

Trust have now put solar panels on as well

LA did nothing at all.

It does depend on the Trust though. There aren't proper checks so even if the people running it are making a poor job of it there's nowhere to complain to/to hold them to account. A huge trust near us went bust a few years ago. Plenty knew what wA happening but no power to stop it.

MATES MATS we call those run as you describe.

Yes salaries and employee numbers and overall costs of LA Education depts have dropped considerably because there are far less schools in the LA (due to academies!) so the entire function is much much smaller than it was.
i would have thought that was pretty obvious!

Many mats are awful. Override the teachers and governors at every turn. One took over dcs secondary and they changed all the uniform and rebranded a relatively new school where the kids and parents liked the branding and uniform. It was just extra expense for everyone for no benefit and even the headteacher was powerless to stop it. They mandate stupid rules about colour of socks. I hate them. They are businesses with no right to have an opinion about education. They don't employ people that know anything about running schools, just business people.

@Violashifts thank you for highlighting this. Our MAT is riddled with nepotism and cronyism. The staff mostly wfh and it is very difficult to get any response from them. Much of what they do just duplicates perfectly adequate processes already in place in schools. The marketing is absolutely pointless and very expensive and mostly self promoting for the MAT. I can't wait for an investigative journalist to expose all this.

Christ, did I really just read that? You know not all kids are academic right? That many kids go to school with no breakfast, no caring parent to wave them off? That for many kids school is their best chance of having their abuse spotted? It shouldn't be but is reality. What an incredibly narrow view to suggest that all schools need to do is academics.

And you talk of misinformation…£200,000 salary 18 years ago for the Director of CYPS.😂

A quick google shows current salaries for advertised posts as around £150,000.
York average £116, 00. Halifax £144,000. Do you really think the salary pay bands have dropped that much over the years. Inflation? Increasingly vulnerable children…

LA spending on salaries would have been larger 20 years ago as teams were larger. Local school improvement team has reduced from 120 to 15 in that time. As the Conservative government removed democratic control of schools and they became part of a trust, LA staff were redundant. Less schools to support and grants to LA’s stopped with the funds going directly to MATS and teaching schools.

So much misinformation on this thread

1/. MATs are not profit making companies. They operate under charity commission laws. They can only spend their money on educating children. There are no shareholders etc. The land, building and money still belongs to the govt

2/. MATs have taken on some of the most challenging and difficult schools in the country and for the most part made a success of them often where LAs failed multiple times

3/. CEO salaries - some are ridiculous and the DfE needs to step in - they have the power. But LA salaries were for the most part even higher. The OP seems to think that LA education leads and officers worked for free. In our mid sized LA, the education improvement dept salaries prior to MATs was well over 5 million & that’s back in 2008ish - I remember it well! And standards were awful. They offered no support and never held any HT to account. School budgets were permanently in deficit - it was a mess. The director of education was taking home 200K plus 18 years ago

Absolutely agree! My oldest was treated disgusting by a multi academy school (teacher not believing he has autism, delaying his referral by over three years!) we deregistered his younger brother last September from the same school, due to the bullying by staff, parents and other students!

The problem with education in this country is they are trying to make one size fits all and MATS are the worst example of that.

In theory there’s so much about them that is a good idea- shared resources and even shared teachers. I worked for one and the community aspect was great, if you were stuck there was always someone to ask.
However the schools in the trusts were wildly different but all staffing was standardised. So you’d be in one school where the pastoral staff would be sat about with little to do, and others where they were run ragged. They wouldn’t give extra staff to the ones struggling.
Lots of the SLT were awful and literally only interested in earning more and more money, taking on responsibilities and then try to pass the work onto support staff on minimal wage (I know that happens a lot of places).

yes they get results but how many children are disengaged with learning by the end, which causes more issues than a few lower GCSEs.

Yes, straight to the MAT, from individual school budgets, through a top slice ( to pay the CEO!) and for all other MAT services.

@hydriotaphia they also have to follow Company law. Many of them are dealing with many millions of pounds

MATs are not businesses, they are charitiable trusts - they have to abide by charity law and the trust's individual charitable objectives in the same way as any other charity.

@Liondoesntsleepatnight same with LAs. Nearby Children's Services have been in special measures for a number of years. so person at the top isn't worth their money!

Not all MAT’s are equal. I worked with Oasis MAT founder them brilliant, forward thinking, technically very savvy and financially robust.

I have personal experience of the Xavier trust, again all good.

Leigh - not so

@CelRa MAT CEO salaries in this area are nowhere near the £250k mark, and in fact many would be lower than Director of CYPS salary you mention. But each MAT has a CEO so that is a cost that MAT has to cover.

If public sector salaries are so much lower you then have to wonder where the top slice of school funding went, bearing in mind the central team costs in a MAT should roughly equate to this top slice element.

When I was a school governor of a state maintained school there was not only the top slice element taken by LEA but we also had to have service level agreements with them for things like HR, so we paid quite a bit of money to LEA. That money would now go straight to the MAT.

I think it is about how many Directors or CEO’s too across an area.

So in the figures I gave above, for 151,000 children in the LA and given the above MAT CEO is accountable for about 5,000 of those, in school alone, we would need 30 more MAT CEO’s if all schools in the LA had academised.

If course even if that were the case, the LA would still require the Director of CYPS, given all of the other statutory duties that that role is accountable for.

I don't think the Director CYPS salary of £160,000 is bad value given that we could spend £250,000 x 30 (£7.5m) on the required MAT CEO’s ( plus the Director of CYPS for statutory duties ( unless MAT CEO’s are going to be responsible for all of the other roles too - Children’s Social Care….).

I don't want to share the actual school but Sec of State made the decision in two weeks, without any local consultation ( parent, community). The council member for schools has voiced an opinion on this, given she is a Tory councillor and the Sec of State is Labour. MAT will have had to work with LA strategic planning to ensure enough places locally and the Diocese, if a church school.

DfE documents suggest a ‘listening period’ after the Sec of State has approved the closure, but this is guidance only and doesn't have to take place.

@CelRa I wasn't saying there would be more LAs, but hypothetically if there were I assume each would have a Director of CYPS. Same as each MAT has a Senior Leader. They have to have a Senior Executive Leader (who has to be the Accounting Officer) and a Chief Finance Officer under the Trust regulations.

I don't think there are going to be more LA’s…yes more MAT’s possibly, though the move is to amalgamation to remove smaller and standalone MAT’s.

The Director CYPS, of course, has an Assistant Director, or Head of Service service but then so does the MAT CEO.

DfE are now bringing in RISE groups to help with School Improvement, I wonder how changes will be implemented in schools

@CelRa how many people work with Director of CYPS? if there were more LAs how much would each have to pay Director of CYPS? This is the problem if you need a CEO you have to pay CEO rates. Some MATs are now having part-time CEOs to help with costs.

@CelRa how quickly they were able to close a school. As I said our local MAT has to jump through many hoops when any changes are considered, and I would have assumed the same would apply if a school had to be closed. A number of the local Primaries (under different Trusts) have under 50 pupils so I would assume if birth rate keeps falling then some of them may have to close and I would have assumed a consultation process would happen in this instance.