Primary MAT - any good points? (Governor perspective)

[topcat2014]

I am a governor of a primary school with one form entry. The school is currently full.

We are in exploratory talks with a group of schools about becoming a MAT. We started a couple of years ago, really to try and avoid compulsion.

It seems, for the moment, that political requirement has passed.

At best I am ambivalent about MATs, and am aware of teachers concerns about T&Cs etc.

Does anyone have experience of any good points? I suppose there must be some?

We are a primary school that was taken over by a secondary school who formed the MAT. I will concentrate on the good points The terms on which we TUPE'D over were good. Apart from the nursery nurses who have stayed on their old contracts (52 week year, which wouldn't have survived) the rest have gained slightly as the secondary school terms are better (e.g. London weighting) and they have brought us into line with theirs. My concern as a support staff member is that if I ever leave and return to the LG fold, I will have to start again in terms of length of service which at the moment is about two weeks extra pay. (The MAT have honoured all that). They have followed the LG increments since taking over, I'm not sure if that's compulsory or it's just out of the goodness of their heart! As this is only our first year things may improve or get worse. Before it all happened we had a meeting with outside 'experts', and the SLT from the other school to explain the process where you could ask questions etc. It seemed very smooth and a good thing at that point...

Thanks!

I've worked for schools under an LA and two different MATs.

It depends how your potential MAT will be set up, but in my experience the CPD, IT, HR and other support of the MATs has been of far, far higher quality than that of the local authority.

In well-run MATs, the economies of scale can be significant. Education funding isn't going to increase any time soon and for some small schools joining a MAT can be the only way to guarantee their future, financially speaking.

We joined one recently and it's been nothing but positive for the whole school. Advice we got when looking at options was to find a group of schools with the same ethos and values, with strong leadership. Our CEO is the former headteacher of one of the schools, and we follow all the LA T&C's out of choice. We're also all primary schools as the local secondaries can be a bit domineering, it's working very well for us and for what each school needs in its own individual way.

I'll add that staff support, well being and development we're big things for us and we've had that in spades since the off.