To despise MATs (Multi Academy Trusts)

Im so glad my youngest is about to leave school. The trust that runs the school is based nigh on 100 miles away, they came in, made upteen changes,no consultation with parents or the kids in the school, just this is how its done now. Very few stuck, infact every half term something changes to a new system even more backwards than the previous. New initiatives that dont have the childrens interest at heart. Thery have lost so many good staff members with more leaving soon. The school doesnt have a single permenant english teacher left now, instead its staffed by substitues and the year 11 students now have to go in on a saturday morning for "tutoring" to try and ensure some of them atleast pass GCSE's. Its disgusting, ill be glad to be done with it.

Please can you explain, I’m not sure what you are amazed at? Perhaps I can add more detail?

non teaching year heads are usually not teachers and paid considerably less.

MAT CEO pay is high but so is the pay of council leaders.

There is no comparison between the roles, responsibility and accountability of LA Director of CYPS and a MAT CEO.

Director of Children and Young People (CYPS) responsible for..

All children 0-25 including SEND (in excess of 151,000)
Schools, improvement and statutory duties (407 school )
Early Years including sufficiency, PVI and WRAC (773 providers)
SEND
Children’s Social Care (safeguarding all children especially the vulnerable , teams of social workers, Early Help, adoption and fostering etc)
Adult Learning and Youth Services
Outdoor Education Service
Music Service
School place strategic planning and admissions
Finance
Accountable publically, in recorded and online meetings, published minutes to elected councillors. Those elected by you and I.

I could go on.

Local MAT CEO, responsible and accountable for 8 schools.
Education
Safeguarding prior to LA involvement, but supported by.
Finance
Accountable to the MAT Trustees, as selected by the MAT Trustees.
Direct oversight by the Sec. Of State for Education who takes decisions in all academies across the country.

Director of CYPS earns around £160,000
CEO MAT earns £259,000

MATs have been great, tbh. Our LA is shit, and whether you like it or not MATs and the Govian reforms of phonics, times tables tests etc, have led to English schools doing much better in the PISA rankings and other international tests. In stark contrast to Welsh and Scottish schools...

And frankly, the bare minimum I expect from my children's schools is to help them get the best grades they are capable of.

My son’s school became one when he was in year one, tge school is like a business now. It’s no longer a friendly place, cold
qnd soulless. The decent staff have left in droves leaving the less good staff and NTQs who often leave after a year. I would have moved him but all the schools in our area banded together. I’m not sending him to the senior school though.

They recently brought out a very strict behaviour policy which we all had to sign to say we have read on behalf of our children. As a result there has been 15 exclusions since autumn term and all of them sen kids.

Home work is unreal and starts at reception, phonics is like a factory line of pushing information down their throats to pass a test. Ditto timestables.

Have worked in two MATs (one large, one small) so not an unbiased opinion but the first I worked in took a large number of inadequate, failing schools and made them good (using the language of Ofsted ratings here.)

I work in a small MAT now and we share resources across the schools so that the schools can access proper HR, finance, governance, safeguarding and IT support. I can definitely see the benefits of sharing services. MAT CEO pay is high but so is the pay of council leaders.

@CelRa I’m amazed by that. Local MAT sold off a building, no longer used by schools due to falling roll. No school closed in the process. Took months of negotiating with ESFA. Money received can only be used for capital projects (and we are not talking millions)

Absolutely.

And your predictive text sums it up school governor for 10 tears.

Sadly.

When my DD's children's school was planning academization, she and I were the ONLY two people who turned up to the meeting about it. Parents have no idea of the implications of all this.

The problem has been that at the time of academisation not enough parents, or community members understood the changes.

Locally, we have a MAT closing another of their schools. Parents and the community are enraged by lack of ‘democratic’ oversight as there is no need for the consultation process that maintained LA schools need to go through, involving public meetings, councillor involvement, local knowledge, over at least a six month period.

MAT has asked the Sec.of State for Ed to agree the closure of this school. SSE has agreed, took two weeks.

Parents and the community consulted on academisation, one letter of objection, two parents at the meeting, academisation approved. This was their chance to keep ‘democratic oversight’. They chose not to.

Joining a MAT has been a massive benefit to my kids school.

Some of these MATs a re "managing" schools nationally with no local connection. How can this be right?

Schools are like water companies though - you can only 'choose' whats on offer where you live. And they are all MATs. My 2 nearest secondaries are both part of the same utterly stupid MAT. Of the two further away, one is part of a different MAT and the other is clinging on to LEA controlled. That's the one I'm tempted to apply for, but our chances are not high of getting in so we'll have to see. There's no way I'm sending my kids to the crazy local MAT. I'll have to homeschool I guess if we don't get in to another one but we shouldn't have to.

Indeed so. And instead of reforming LEAs the route if highly expensive academisation was chosen. A big mistake.

@Violashifts I don't know any staff personally but have had phone calls with them because they ring home when your child is doing brilliantly as well as if they misbehave which neither of mine did. Plus parents' evenings, rewards evenings and all the other open evenings they laid on to engage students and parents in learning ie Geography and History stuff, getting parents to do the work too.

Speaking to staff was always positive. Even at Ds2's parents' evening Ds1's teacher flagged us to come to him to tell us Ds1's year 11 mock mark as he had just marked his paper and what to do to improve his grade. We had lots of specific feedback from teachers even down to year 11 maths papers matrix where they break down each question as to whether you got it right, some right or completely wrong all colour coded and a link to an explanation of the topic and more questions on that topic to see if you can now do it. It was child specific too. As I said they really did put everything into children succeeding, dividing the history class into those on higher grade profiles and those on lower so they could improve all the children's grades. Differentiation was great. Ds1's history teacher even came to find him in another lesson to show him he had aced the 18 marker at last.

They may have learned to play the Progress 8 game, I wouldn't know how that is done, but their success is across the board from Total Attainment and 5+ in English and Maths. Their Ofsted report on teachers, the curriculum and teaching is almost sycophantic. However, they have had a while to nail this and have gone on to do this in other schools.

How they did it? I have actually read an article by the head and know locally that he went in and said let's have a school to be proud of, one that people will do anything to get into. The school was "satisfactory" at the time. He came down hard on uniform, set standards on behaviour and attitude to learning, came down hard on bullying because he wanted children to feel safe and come to school. I know attendance is still high. Pastoral is praised by Ofsted but I had some dealings with them too and thought they were brilliant.

@Mischance I bet there were quite a few unnecessary employees and wasted resources in LEA too.

No system is perfect.

MATs have to take on failing schools.

It probably depends on what area of the country you are in on how flashy MATs are. In areas where there are a number of small rural Primary schools being in a Trust is probably necessary for your survival with pupil numbers falling and being able to share resources.

Academies first came in under Labour and had the aim of helping failing schools.
The Tories latched onto them as a way of pushing their anti LA policies, and imposing their ideological business model on what is a public service.
Instead of reforming LEAs we have finished up with a wholly inappropriate quasi business model.
Gove loved it all of course.
Having been a school governor for 10 tears I watched this debacle unfold with growing alarm.
What started as a way of helping failing schools is now the complete opposite. MATs cherry pick successful schools to suck into their orbit. They require less effort and investment.
Schools that wish to remain independent of the academisation steamroller have to deal with dwindling and non existent LEA support and often feel railroaded into joining a MAT.
Whilst a governor at a small rural primary I was involved in researching MATs to decide the best way forward. I was hortified by what I found... slick corporate guys in suits with glossy brochures and smarmy sales talk ... central decision making and loss of autonomy for schools ... rafts of unnecessary employees hopping on the gravy train.
It all makes my heart sink.

As a parent I want my children to be happy, secure, socially responsible and well rounded people. I want them to learn and value kindness, inclusion, communication; I want them to discover the joy of learning and be allowed to develop and make mistakes at their own pace. I want them to feel safe at school.
The highest possible grades are near the bottom of the list, and I’m sceptical that that always leads to better/well paid jobs - it depends what you want to do. I certainly couldn’t do my well paid job without the resilience and ‘soft skills’ I gained through studying in a supportive environment.

I work with lots of great, inspiring, supportive colleagues and it has a huge impact of my quality of life - it’s not enough to “live for the weekend” - I want the same for my children so no, I don’t think care at home can compensate for being miserable at school!

it seems to me that whilst some are well run (one of my SILs is a teacher) the policy as a whole was misguided. Not all LAs are great, certainly, but this took one problem and replaced it with a different one.

@ImAChangeling many MATs hold land on long leasehold from LA

So, a lot of schools come with assets. Valuable land especially, purchased using taxpayers money.

Does the academy system mean that assets owned by the people have (yet again) been given away to private businesses? Totally unacceptable if so.