To despise MATs (Multi Academy Trusts)

[Violashifts]

At the end of the day they are businesses. I don't think they benefit education.

What was wrong with a local authority looking after all schools in their area? Now you can't share with the school along the road but can with one in another town as they are in the same trust. So travel 30 miles instead of 2.

Sure they may save on HR, can share results and data etc but they waste more on improvement officers, marketing videos. A crew coming in filming chosen shots and then adding it to music. Not cheap. Don't even get me started on CEO pays as in the article below. How can they justify 40k pay rises an
or 250k salaries. Heads should be able to run a school. It is not needed.

Meanwhile at the chalkface the number of teachers, TAs and even lunch time supervisors are reduced and new equipment isn't afforded.
How is this helping the students?
How is this helping the recruitment crisis?
How is this helping the woeful SEN
provision?

Am I wrong?

I think its a big scandal waiting to happen.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/revealed-the-academy-ceo-pay-premium/

[Title edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

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

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

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.

Out of the mouth of babes.

'Miss do we have any more exams after
these ones?'

' I am not sure ,there maybe' name of trust wide exams'

' Ugh I hate ' name of trust' it was better before' ' They walk round here doing nothing just looking at us'

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!

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

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.

I absolutely do not think they worked for free!

Thanks @CelRa for clarifying the difference.

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.

@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.

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.

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!

MATES MATS we call those run as you describe.

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.

ESFA do do checks and the accounts are audited (although the money may have been spent by then)

If people are concerned about their Trust you could become a governor/Trustee

15% of state maintained schools were in deficit in 23/24

Agree, my daughter is in year 8, another going up in Sept, and 5 years ago there is no way I would have sent them to this school. Taken over by a MAT, all northern schools and the difference is astonishing! A friend of mine works for the trust, very experienced and quite high up (100k+) and he works bloody hard for his money...I find it hard to begrudge the high wages when they're getting results the LA couldn't

And the number of MATS with a deficit has tripled since 2021.

The figures show that academy trusts, which run more than 10,000 schools in England, have little room for financial manoeuvre than ever: In 2023-24, 60 per cent of trusts reported deficits, compared with less than 20 per cent in 2020-21.

@CelRa I think that shows neither system works well. And the funding for next academic year is going to be crippling for all schools

I agree. We've had a horrendous time with a MAT school and the seem to be untouchable.

When we were investigating MATs for our rural primary where I was COG, one of the things that perturbed us was that all the land would be handed over to the trust, and all the other physical assets, much of which had been built and maintained by local people who had a personal interest in the school and its success - they had gone there as pupils, and their own chidlren and grandchildren were there. They had rolled up their sleeves and built many of the facilities as voluntary labour and were proud of the school.

And we would have had to hand it over to a bunch of people accountable to no-one. The boards of these MATs are the "great and the good" and I was astounded at how they were appointed.

We were only looking at it because we did not want to finish up having no choice over which MAT to join should membership have eventually become diktat - and even finding out where we stood over that was impossible. So many of the local rural primaries had joined MATs for just that reason - scared of where they would be allocated if they finished up obliged to join a MAT and getting no choice on one that tallied with their ethos.

At meetings about this with MATs any raising of these concerns was met with shock and horror - it was as if they were a sort of cult that you could not question; that you had to sign up to the "company message" and were heretics if you raised concerns. Frankly we all found it pretty creepy.

I totally agree!!

And please do not forget the millions of £s that go on legal fees for setting up these trusts, and that schools incur when joining. The government is forking all this out when the money might have been better spent on funding schools properly in the first place. There are whole legal firms that set up to do nothing but this .......

Same with us. We put in complaints and they all got overruled. Even had the senco defend bully's to our face, not to mention lying about having access to files about our oldest son, which caused a delay and fight to get him his ehcp

And remembering also that LA staff have to be politically impartial, so although a MAT can ‘sell it’s wares’ to schools, to convince them of the benefits of academising, LA staff are not allowed to promote the benefits of remaining maintained as they must follow political (DfE) steer.

LA staff are also not allowed to discuss the possible negatives of joining a MAT.

It is a scandal waiting to happen.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/apr/16/academies-fuel-explosion-in-school-costs?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR4xYNeZP0MD-wn7ZzfY_S-PdwVxzl1t8eJ2h1Q3EFdCJAj41DstHfNqmd8Xwg_aem_YNVHM7juaXeqaSzhPHhrkg