MAT's

[JennyJ77]

Does anyone have experience of having a child in primary school taken over by a MAT? Opinions please!

Every mat is very different. Some are run by big businesses with very little school knowledge, lots of fun by secondaries without a huge amount of primary experience and some are very small and specific to the area they are based in. Its very normal for academies to form MATs to share cost of finances such as payroll and hr. As I say some can be very successful and very much provide autonomy for the school and some are the opposite!

Although mostly interested in general opinions and pros/cons etc.

The big one around here is shit... their primaries are falling apart and have staff putting buckets out every time it rains to catch the leaks... lead school in the trust has a fucking private number plate on the school minibus for fucks sake.

Was terrified for our own school's recent Ofsted in case it was bad and opened our school up to being gobbled up by them (turned out we're outstanding!)

I'm sure not all are as bad as our local big boys are.

Only advantage from being part of a MAT here - it allowed closer links between infants/junior/secondary schools; savings via economies of scale and opportunities for knowledge sharing.

MATs are not accountable to the Local Authority, so not to democratic elected members.

Schools entering a MAT will become a 'new' school and won't be inspected for the first three years. Tempting if an inspection is due and may not be successful.

MATs appoint and move staff without following usual recruitment procedures. The CEO of a local MAT was self appointed, that post was never advertised.

Very business orientated rather than providing a service.

MATs are not accountable to the Local Authority, so not to democratic elected members.

I would question whether any school is accountable to the democratic elected members now, maybe 20 years ago they were but not now.

Certainly held to account by elected members in my LA through regular meetings with senior LA staff.

jenny well done for asking. I despair at the lack of interest in the status of schools by parents. Parents should be asking questions of schools to ensure that conversion is in the best interests of their children. Is this really going to raise standards.

In my locality conversion of 15 schools and from those only an average of 3 parents per school asked any questions at all. The education system is being changed from service to business with no going back...and parents aren't interested enough to find out if this is best for their children and also for all children in this country. Worrying.