Joining a MAT - What are the issues from both parents & teachers points of view

[AlexanderHamilton]

We'[ve been sent a letter about the consulation process with regards to ds's school which is currently a Standalone Academy joining a MAT with a large 6th form college.

The school say this will help them to reduce administration costs, to work together on projects and to negotioate for contracts and services.

Dh is a teacher and has worked in an academy previously that had a massive increased pressure for staff and inflexible, expensive new uniforms for students but I wonder if there are any other issues I should be aware of/raise in my reply. So far only a few parents have replied and those that did said they didn;t want to join a MAT with the 6FC but wanted to join forces with the feeder schools but the feeder schools are not amenable to this and are joining other MATS.

The FAQ letter we've been sent states that the name and the uniform will not change (the current head is against anything that causes unecessary expense for parents)

This is my experience of MAT

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27238265

Plus lots of other shit... I left

So many variables. Is it a chain MAT - so one of the big academy chains - or a group of local schools joining together? What are the OFSTED ratings of all the schools in the MAT? If there are too many RI schools I would worry about them draining resources, both financial and personnel.

Who will be on the MAT board? Who is the executive head? How much autonomy will the individual schools have to make decisions regarding teaching and learning, budgets, staffing? You mention the current head - they may not necessarily be kept on by the MAT if they are likely to challenge the MAT board too much.

Concerns that I would have - MAT can top slice budgets leaving less money for the schools, can make decisions in the best interest of the MAT or other schools within the MAT but not necessarily an individual school or individual students eg may limit number of GCSEs studied or limit subjects on offer, make decisions around data ie pupil progress, P8 rather than individual students best interests., divert funds from some schools towards other schools within the MAT if schools aren't allowed to retain control of all of their budget so if there is a school within the MAT underperforming or needing major repair works the MAT could possibly disproportionately support the failing school to the detriment of other schools.

On the upside there are benefits of joining a good MAT - shared resources including HR, payroll, office support maybe even some subject teachers where possibly some schools wouldn't need a full time teacher but could share a teacher with other schools within the MAT. Schools can share experience, ideas, collaborate. Increased buying power and economies of scale. A light touch MAT board that allows member schools to maintain their identity and budget control with only a small amount of top slicing could work very well.

Not all MATs are the same and the set ups can look different for each MAT.

If I were responding to a consultation like this I would be trying to find out as much as I could about all of the schools currently within the MAT and also the position of the school looking to join the MAT.

So did you go to a school that was a standalone academy or one that wasn't an academy.

There are no schools in the entire county that are not academies.

There are no schools in the entire county that are not academies

Not entirely sure about this. However, for definite in my LA quite a few schools have only been academies since September of this year. Of these some became an academy and joined a MAT at the same time - it has not gone well!

It would be two schools - ds's school a "good" local 14-18 comp & a very large 6th Form College (where I went myself many years ago)

Many students currently leave ds's school as the 6th form is tiy and only offers very limited subjects. My neice currently goes to the 6th form college and I want ds to consider it for 6th form. (but he wants to stay at the much smaller school).

All the other schools in the area seem to be part of large academy chains.

P8 is a funny one. I suspect that results don;t always show the true picture because they only get the kids in Year 9.

Certainly all the secondaries have been academies since about 2011. There may be the odd primary I don't know abaout.

P8 is a funny one. I suspect that results don;t always show the true picture because they only get the kids in Year 9.

Good point but my concern about a MAT pressurising schools around P8 is around the MAT insisting a school makes certain decisions to benefit P8 data rather than what is right for an individual student. So eg Fred wants to study a particular subject but would get a higher result in another subject. He has a good reason for wanting to study his choice but the school won't take the hit on P8. Or Fred doesn't want to study a MFL at all but the pathways are too inflexible to accommodate this.

I've been a governor at a school where the Head and SLT always took decisions that were in the best interests of an individual student and took the hit to our data if necessary. So not all students had to study an MFL or a humanity or could study less subjects than the norm or possibly dropped a subject that they were really struggling with and had more lessons in other subjects. These are just a few examples.

The point being we had the autonomy to make these decisions. One local MAT offers a very restrictive curriculum, less variety because it's cheaper, limits the number of subjects studied so little individual choice once the compulsory subjects are included, because doing this means that they look good in the league tables. Individually though some students aren't well served by this.

if there is a school within the MAT underperforming or needing major repair works the MAT could possibly disproportionately support the failing school to the detriment of other schools.

Interesting. IOt's ds's school that is a run down 70's building with no money for facilities wheras th 6FC is a brand new state (they moved sites a few years ago) state of the art, purpose built college.

Certainly all the secondaries have been academies since about 2011.
Complete opposite here - secondaries have been slow to academise, the last ones only going this September. Until this year no primaries have been academies.

It's not a clear cut decision by any means. I guess some MATs are very good and will drive improvements. Others are dreadful and divert resources away from the students and do little to improve the education of pupils.

It's interesting that academies were hailed as being a way of taking schools out of LA control and giving them autonomy, allowing them to take their own decisions, allocate their own budget spending etc. Now they are forced into joining ever growing MATs in order to get benefit of scale, share resources etc and so losing some if not all autonomy and basically re creating mini LAs except that these MATs are under the control of the department of education, rather than local government in the form of LAs.

Hhhmmm. Wonder why that would be?

Currently at ds's school students have to study maths, english x 2, science x 2 and then one out of either history, geography German or computer science. The remaining subjects are completely free choice (not even option blocked how the heck they did it I don't know).

The 6FC pride themselves on being the only FE college in the area that allows a combination of btec & A level and also does not set minimum requirements for A level subjects other than having achieved what is considered a good pass at GCSE.

IOt's ds's school that is a run down 70's building with no money for facilities wheras th 6FC is a brand new state (they moved sites a few years ago) state of the art, purpose built college.

Then the school could possibly benefit with the MAT spending more on it. Though there could be a downside to this. The MAT might insist on certain conditions before it allows the school to join in order to mitigate the spend. On the other hand it may make no difference if there are only 2 schools in the MAT because the likelihood is that there won't be much surplus to allocate.

The other point to bear in mind is that 6th form students attract less funding than 11-16 students. It's actually not profitable to run 6th forms unless you can attract a large number of students. Your son's school could well end up subsidising the 6th form!

They've been a trial associate member for the past year.
The 6th form at ds's school is tiny. I really want ds to stay there (he moved from another school becasue he was really unhappy and the SEN provision was excellent despite them having no money (it was basic understanding not actual things that cost money that he needed) but his school 6th form just don't offer the subjects.

The 6FC is huge. Most other secondary schools in the county don't have 6th forms and if they do they are very small and limited. There are two other large FE colleges of differing characters.

The experience I have is that other academy schools have had silly, highly prescriptive uniform changes (in a city with a high level of deprivation)

To be honest OP, I think uniform should be the least of your worries!

Responses to the consultation won't matter a jot anyway. The decision will already have been made and the consultation process is just a tick box exercise.

When you have a child with ASD uniform is never the least of your worried, rather it can be the casue of a multitude of issues!

I understand that. It's just the potential for big changes when a school joins a MAT is huge. Maybe your school will remain entirely the same as it is now and a member of the MAT in name only.

Or maybe it won't. Maybe everything will change, including it's name, uniform, SLT, curriculum, ethos etc despite what they are currently saying.

It has the potential to be hugely disruptive for staff and students alike but sadly there is nothing that you can do about it.

Hopefully it will all be positive changes and for the students little will change.

Just been investigating further (trying to work my way down your list of points from your 9.46 post.

Governance is currently

Chief Exec - Principal of 6FC
Members - Vice Chancellor of local university
Vice Chancellor of other local university
Deputy Vice Chancellor of local university
Retired ex finance employee of 6FC & local university
Local Businessman/govenor of local university/director of chamber of commerce
Then there is a list of Trustees which include Heateacher of ds's school

It's really difficult for me to comment one way or another. Obviously I don't know the schools in question and even you as a parent will only know what they are telling you.

Personally I don't like MATs (or academies either!!) I guess done well and with the students at the centre they could work well but my experience is that very quickly students disappear from the equation other than as data figures or income streams.

The list of governors you posted - is that the current board of the 6th form rather than the executive board of the MAT? If it's the executive board then it's very biased in favour of the 6th form college. If however the MAT has not yet been set up maybe the exec board will be very different.

There isn't anything that you can do about any of this. These are simply my observations. The only real choice you have is to consider moving your child to a school that is in a more settled position and where you know, with a degree of certainty, what the landscape looks like.

This current school is about to enter a period of upheaval. Staff may not welcome the change and may be unwilling to wait and see so you may find some churn. On the other hand they might realise that this will bring benefits and be fully on board. It's very hard to tell at this early stage whether it's a good thing or not.

It's certainly got the potential to be a disruptive process but I don't see much at all that you can do. Possibly engage with the consultation process if the have any presentations etc and put your views across but honestly, you won't affect anything. The decision will already have been made.

The way the board is set up at present is very unlikely to be allowed by the ESFA now in forming the MAT. Best practice is now not for the principals or CEO to be on the Trust Board as they are employees who will be reporting to the Trust Board directly or indirectly.
So my first question would be who is actually going to be on the Trust Board and what will be the delegated powers to the local governing committee at the school. You do need to understand that what ever is said now, the reality is that the Trust Board can change it in the future.
The other area I would be immediately concerned to get sorted is what is to happen to the 6th form of the school. If it is small then everything would suggest that it will cease to exist and all go to the 6th form college. That to me is a critical question and if the consultation does not say what is going to happen I would have question the openness of the consultation.

The MAT my DC school is part of is fairly new and small (5 schools) and I don't think it works well. The whole concept works for big trusts like Harris but until they grow large enough they seem to cause more issues than they solve. The chief exec was the head at my DC secondary but the governors eventually said he could be one or the other as trying to run a large school and a MAT is next to impossible and the school suffered for it.

I’d want to know what the plans are for the school sixth form. It could be really beneficial opening up more courses for the kids who stay at the school if they could be bussed to the college for certain lessons (my school does this between sixth forms in our MAT) or they could share teachers so the college computing science teacher could also teach comp sci at the school (or whatever).

OR they could close the school sixth form down.

At the moment the majority of children leave the school aged 16 to attend a larger 6th formor FE college.

The MAT appears to only have the 6FC as its only member with the school as an Associate Member at the moment.

The teacher I spoke to last night at a School/Parent/Community Group seemed to be quite in favour but she said so far they had only had 2 parental and 4 staff responses. (The meeting was not about the MAT it was about ways the school can engage with parents and the community more it was just mentioned in passing.

My experience of the Primary I taught at joining a MAT was completely negative so brace yourself for a moan!
Before becoming an academy we were promised lots, promised that planning and the curriculum wouldn't be limited and that TA hours wouldn't be cut - complete lies, they were the first things to go. The way some of the teachers were treated was arguably bullying, it was horrible to watch.
Also the salaries the execs were getting paid while classrooms were denied basic resources and SEN children weren't getting their TA hours and all TA hours outside funded 1 to 1 were completely done away with was disgusting. I can't think of a single thing done to actually benefit the children at all, it was all data and profit motivated.

I guess in relevance to your post, don't take anything you have been told at the consultation as truth. As someone upthread said, it's not really a parent 'consultation' since the decision will have already been made, same goes for consulting with staffm

Pretty much all negative then.

From what I gather the school has to join a MAT. Parents want it to join with the middle schools but the middle schools don’t want to.
I’ve heard a lot of negative things about the big established Academy Trusts & how they are impersonal.

Also be aware that a school can't leave a MAT, no 'try before you buy' policy.