Multi academy trusts

[Ooogetyooo]

If you work in a school that is under a multi academy trust, what does it actually mean? The secondary school I'm looking at for my DS is one of 3 secondaries all linked under same MAT, with all the accompanying blurb on website raving about the benefits of this arrangement like lower costs and sharing resources and teaching practices. But are there disadvantages that I'm perhaps missing ?

My opinion is probably coloured by the one I worked and I have no doubt that there are some advantages, but there are downsides too, I think.

There may be one or more primary schools involved, if it’s a MAT. Each school in a MAT has responsibility for the performance of all the others. There may well be sharing of resources, economies of scale, resources and teachers. MATs have their own admission criteria, staffing and salary structures and are accountable to the trust and not the LA. I think that teachers can be drafted in to other schools in the trustvif there is a gap or a shortage, so you could have cross phase teachers. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but some teachers dislike moving from secondary to primary or vice versa.

Perhaps teachers will have to move between secondary sites and split site teaching can be tricky. I’d do some research, go to the open evenings, visit the school during the day if you can and then you can make an informed decision.

Depends on the MAT. Some are horrendously badly run, financial irregularities, ditching schools back into LA control with no money left. Google the MAT in the news!

The MAT my school is in is pretty benign, I rate our CEO and they basically let each school run itself as it wishes but we do share resources, staff, HR and Finance, kids get shuttled around for A-level options, we have joint training days and so on. Some staff may be stretched a bit thinly and I worry about further expansion.