To despise MATs (Multi Academy Trusts)

People do like to generalise about MATs. The one my school is in is fine, tbh. Lots of benefits of sharing resources and expertise. The LA who used to offer that stuff wasn't any better. Mostly we just crack on as school, and we're allowed to do things differently to other schools in the MAT.

What happens if all the schools in your area are owned by one or two academy trusts with the same bonkers approaches? Should the whole family sell up and try and move to a different county?

Why don’t you just move school if not happy about it?

My children's school is listed on that report. What I will say from a parent's perspective, the school was completely shit and satisfactory on inspection. The new head came in and turned the whole thing around, not just grades but behaviour too and that included staff behaviour It then became an academy. Another school they took on had completely shit GCSE pass rates I think below 40% and turned it into another outstanding academy.

From my point of view, the school is now in the top 5% of the country on Progress 8 and my children were lucky enough to get in after the academy conversion and everything ironed out. All children including low ability are encouraged to do well and do improve their grades. As my children have been through their GCSEs there is nothing more the school could have done to ensure success. This included a post covid Saturday morning teaching for some year 11s, after school support and revision. Pre and post covid change of form so that you were put with a teacher whose subject you needed the most help in turning form time into teaching time in year 11.

Parents in to school to learn how to help their child not just for revision and exams in year 11 but also year 7 so you understand how to support your child with their homework.This included sheets to take home to be pinned up with useful information not only for core subjects but others you could choose too. The best was stamping out any low level disruption in classes, dealing with bullying promptly with an iron fist and communication was brilliant.

Their sixth form is the same, motivate the children, push them to get to where they want to get to, teaching staff available to ask questions from, specialised streams for uni or work/apprenticeships and support for that.

I wouldn't know about other MATs but this one really does try hard to make the children succeed.

They are such a scam. All the schools I know were forced into academisation under Gove. Then they had to join with other schools to be able to do the things the LEA used to do for them. Now we have heads of MATs in charge of mad behaviour policies, uniform policies, curricula, and we cannot hold them accountable. They do not hold surgeries, they are not elected, they cannot be ousted by parent pressure. When the LEA was responsible for local education, we could have our say at the ballot box. No more. Privatising state education was as terrible an idea as privatising water, telecoms, the fucking postal service - and still the shit keeps coming.

It’s appalling. They all like to complain about how hard it is to recruit TAs (and use this to justify breaking the law re: SEN support, as “we don’t have the staff”) but seem to ignore the fact that they pay zero hours contracts and pay minimum wage.

Whereas you have 3 or 4 heads/deputy heads for small primary’s that only ever needed one head before becoming academies!

And don’t get me started on the career heads and their huge private offices, whilst moaning that it’s too hard to provide a sensory room and “we don’t have the space”. It’s disgusting.

And this is just within individual schools, before you even start on the actual trust “leadership teams”.

In the accounts of MATS (the same as other company accounts, MATS are governed by both Charity and Company law) the schedule of high paid employees usually now includes a number of headteachers depending on what pay scale they are on.

State maintained schools aren’t exactly rolling in money either and the LA take a slice of their money.

i think it does depend on the MAT tbh. I’ve worked in two and both were very positive experiences!

No need for the 🤦‍♀️ your 2nd post didn't have quotation marks so it appeared as your voice, not an extract from an article. Surely a teacher would know to put speech marks around a quotation if you were lifting directly from text?

Some of the MATs are so large and so dogmatic they ignore local and specific school needs. I don’t know about them all but the very large ones I am aware of just want staff to confirm in a regimented way with little regard for individual students or staff.

They’re all replicating the same stuff at a cost to the taxpayer too. So all MATs employ expensive HR depts, school improvement, accounts etc. whereas the LAs could have done the same for many more schools with much more efficiency.

It has always been a racket and it’s rife with corruption. I can’t believe anyone thought it would be anything but a race to the bottom when all they count is the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

If the MAT ensures the behaviour policy is applied through all schools it can work.
I've worked at three MATs and in only one has the behaviour policy been applied throughout .
So I would cover lessons in school B knowing the behaviour policies would work .
High schools are too big. 1400+ pupils split across several sites.
Pupils travel from one school to another in the town or even county, to study courses that aren't provided at their school so they miss lessons at their home school.

1. MATs are charities not businesses and have to operate according to charity commission rules.

1. Chairs and trustees are unpaid

1. MATs educate larger proportions of disadvantaged pupils

You may have had a bad experience with a MAT, but any are doing tremendous work with some of the most challenging schools in the country.

"Our figures"? Are you a Labour researcher? BP has been speaking out against MATs today......🤔

"A school’s sole purpose is to churn children out with as high a grade as they can achieve."

©1865 Thomas Gradgrind.

There is a lot more to education than just getting the highest grades which are useless if getting the higher grade leads to more young people with anxiety, mental health difficulties and not being work ready.

I work in a MAT which has schools in three different local authorities. We don’t make a profit and our oars are all volunteers. The upsides are that our schools can support each other - share good practice, if a Head is off for any reason another Head can step in, schools can work together and there is always someone to ask for advice. Our aim as a central team is to support the Heads so that they can concentrate on teaching, the children and their staff. What would make a difference is SEND provision being properly supported financially so we can support the children and outside expertise provided if needed. Also what would be helpful is levelling up the amount we are paid per child, the North is paid less than schools in other areas even though the majority of our costs are the same (we pay based on the national rates for teachers).

I agree. I think MATs have been responsible for a huge increase in mental health difficulties in young people. They also treat young people as a homogeneous mass and not individuals.

I work at a MAT which encompasses one of the top secondary schools in the country and several other very low achieving schools. MAT says that things have to be standardised ...including the curriculum, behaviour policies, everything. No acknowledgement that it is not one size fits all, and that while the changes will improve outcomes in the other schools, they are likely to make ours worse.

You all realise that it was Labour who brought in academies as a way of tackling under performance in LA run schools?

Every MAT school I’ve worked in has been much better than LA maintained.

My DCs school is part of a MAT ( as is every other non fee-paying school in a 15 mile radius so no I didn't have a choice). This school alone pays a head, 3 deputies, 5 year heads, a welfare lead and a SENDCO, all to be non teaching. How does it make a profit? I genuinely don't understand how but clearly they do because they're a business.