United Learning, any experience?

[GallaPlacidia]

Our small MAT will be joining United Learning in September. Some schools in our MAT could do with a little help but others have achieved
good progress, attainment, Ofsted reports and are financially viable.
Any experience of United Learning in state schools? Specifically schools that were very good in the first place, did they stay that way?

Yes. United Learning are very good for state schools, they provide extra training for teachers (but they do expect the teachers to work hard for their perks). Because UL owns independent schools, they try to instil a similar ethos into the state schools. Head Office are demanding and don’t like slackers.

(I may or may not have worked in a UL school).

DDs school was Outstanding when it joined UL just over a year ago and whilst not in debt was struggling to manage budgets. As the only state selective state school in the MAT it wasn’t an obvious match and the head reports into the independent school stream where there are other selective schools. The school were recently reinspected and it was outstanding again.

UL have been hands off from parental perspective, there were some queries about the parent fund and how that was being absorbed or not by the MAT and it was never fully explained and a new account now set up.

The school have some IT software which I suspect the school couldn’t have afforded on their own that has made a small impact like a system to book parent evenings and latest microsoft office but overall from a parental and student perspective not much has changed.

They have lots of very experienced teachers at the school and it is half expected (based on ULs own models they have in other schools) over time that that will change to more NQTs but it doesn’t seem to be being forced.

Our small MAT doesn't have a specific problem but being small has limited reserves and I guess the board wished to ensure its long term viability.
I'm not sure yet joining UL was a good move and haven't checked whether they actually deliver improvement and value for money but I'll be poring over league tables and financial statements in the next few weeks and come back with more questions.
In the meantime, thank you both for your answers

Daughters school was taken over by United Learning a few years ago now. Obviously not working there so can't answer from that perspective, but agree that NQT's and also their own teacher training programme seems to be the way they keep costs down. Over half the staff have left to go to other schools which has been disruptive to the gcse years and to a lesser extent the lower years.

There also seems to be lots of visits from those higher up in united learning which seems to make the school run round like ousted are coming! Daughter says on these days the teachers behave differently and they get better food!