Multi-academy Trusts Research Articles

An Evaluation of Education Policy in England since 2010 and the Policy Consequences for Small Primary Schools

The fate of small primary schools (pupils aged five–eleven years old) in England is linked to education policy reforms. This paper presents an evaluation of selected education policy reforms in England since 2010 with suggested consequences for small primary schools. The research was undertaken using a qualitative research methodology that employed a document analysis method to create a Policy Document Analysis Frame (PDAF) for the policy evaluation. The implications of the policy reforms for small primary schools were examined through the conceptual lens of Educational Isolation. Educational Isolation identifies the limiting factors of place for a school’s access to the resources required for school improvement. Education policy reform is focused on school improvement. Small primary schools in England are typically located in rural neighbourhoods with sparse populations, resulting in an average of just over 100 pupils per school. The findings suggest that the contextual factors of place and size for small primary schools in England present disadvantages in relation to the selected national education policy reforms. The national funding formula, Multi Academy Trusts (groups of schools independently regulated but centrally funded by the state), and National Standards are the key policy reforms, driven by a neo-liberal ideology, that are suggested to have implications for the future of small schools. Recommendations are offered to the new 2024 Labour government that would support the re-instatement of small primary schools as an integral part of the education landscape in England.

Enhancing public dialogue about inclusion in school education: a citizens’ panel pilot

IntroductionThis paper reports on a small-scale Citizens’ Panel pilot project using deliberative democratic methods to produce policy ideas about inclusion in school education of young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEN/D) in England. The project had two aims: (i) to obtain information about modifying a Citizens’ Panel process to enhance the effective participation of young people with SEN/D; and (ii) to generate more nuanced, grounded and integrated policy ideas about inclusion than can be found in recent English school education policy.MethodsThe Citizens’ Panel was a two phase deliberative process. Phase 1 involved working with six young people with SEN/D and their parents/carers to shape the Citizens’ Panel agenda, and to obtain information about how they could participate and communicate their perspectives during the events. Phase 2 involved the delivery of the Citizens’ Panel itself, which comprised 28 people: the six young people from phase 1, plus four young people without SEN/D, 13 parents/carers, and five education professionals.ResultsThe process evaluation revealed the need for and impact of meticulous planning using a differentiated and strengths-based approach to design. While participants reported that taking part in the Citizens’ Panel was overall, a positive and worthwhile experience, the differentiated approach involved trade-offs that affected the experiences of some participants without SEN/D, though not detrimentally. The panel produced distinctive ideas about more inclusive schools, where almost all of the themes were about general school changes for everyone. Most general themes involved some specific SEN/D aspects, with only one theme being SEN/D specific. This paper illustrates how these ideas are more nuanced, grounded and integrated than those in current national policy.DiscussionThis paper provides evidence of how deliberative approaches can be used within and between schools, groups of schools (e.g., multi academy trusts), local networks (including local authorities), as well as at the national level. Lessons drawn show how deliberative methods used by advocacy groups, protest movements and non-governmental organisations in support of more transformational change can be developed in ways that enable young people with SEN/D to participate and have their voices heard.

Fragile legitimacy of multi-academy trusts in England: the case for a clear set of indicators to engender trust in the academised school system

ABSTRACT The UK 2019–2024 Conservative Government’s ambition was for all schools in England to be part of a multi-academy trust (MAT), a publicly funded body outside of local authority control (Department for Education 2022a). The preference for larger, geographically widespread MATs has resulted in a centralised system, where governance and management of schools is potentially detached from local views and concerns, leading to questions over the legitimacy of these organisations as providers of education. Through the use of phenomenology and organisational theory, this paper explores conceptions of legitimacy for stakeholders in four MATs. It highlights the fragility of an education system over-reliant on the reputation and expertise of the founding CEO, and trustees who often lack educational and pedagogical knowledge, with limited understanding of local issues. This article argues that the lack of plurality and representation on trust boards, limits agency for academy leaders and diminishes space for local voices to be heard. The inadequacies of applying organisational theory to identify legitimacy are exposed. A more insightful model is presented, including a set of ‘MAT legitimacy indicators’: appropriate knowledge, expertise and values of those in management and governance; cultural and demographic representation in governance; plurality through diversity of voice and dissensus.

Typologising the corporatisation of parent roles in the ‘modern’ governance of Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) in subordinated communities

ABSTRACT This article develops and explores a typology illuminating the types of parent roles in the governance of Multi-Academy Trusts in the corporatised field of school governance and leadership. Policy has positioned parents as objects of managerialist and corporatised practice. This article draws on data generated through observations and interviews with corporate actors and parents from three multi-academy trusts. Such a typology seeks to describe and illuminate how policy and practice entanglements have constructed parent role types as supporters, providers, monitors, local civic knowledge experts, mediators and partners. Thinking with Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital, I explore how these types support the governance of trusts in the delivery of public accountabilities and management of risk. I make two contributions. Firstly, I provide a typology that can be used to describe and illuminate parent role types constructed in a corporatised field. Secondly, by exploring the typology through the corporatised practices of accountability and risk management, parents are revealed as enablers and products of corporate activity, with role types positioned hierarchically in the field, in dominated positions. This study challenges the homogenisation of the consumer parent relationship with governance as these types are constructed as products and enablers in corporate activity.

Governance of Academies in England: The Return of “Command and Control”?

ABSTRACT School-based education in England has undergone significant changes since 2010, with a huge expansion of academies, schools outside local authority control, funded directly by central government. Academies and local authority (LA) maintained schools are subject to different legislative and regulatory frameworks. This paper focuses on the governance of LA maintained schools, single academy trusts (SATs) and schools that are part of multi-academy trusts (MATs). The research involved analysing legislative provision, policy documents, and documents addressing the governance arrangements of a sample of 23 secondary schools. Our findings reveal a fragmented state-funded secondary school system as regards overall governance, school admissions, the curriculum, and the use of funding. Significantly schools in MATs, which are governed by the trust board, lack the autonomy of either SATs or maintained schools and are instead under the ultimate control of the trust board. The paper argues that there is a need for greater consistency regarding the governance of state-funded schools.

Implementasi Fasilitas Sekolah Pada SMA Se-Medan

Implementing a schoolfacilities is a management plan to manage and maintain educational institutions such as schools, academies and multi-academy trusts can be an overwhelming task. However, having an effective facility management system such as facility management software and also hardware can provide several benefits. For example, improving learning environments, improving school quality and quantity and supporting the educational outcomes of every student. If almost 50% of teachers believe that their workplace harms their well-being, it is worth thinking about how the introduction of a commercial venue and facility could help.

Lived experiences of educators and leaders in multi-academy trusts in England: The colonisation of schools, the erosion of community engagement and the need for alternative futures

Reconceptualising the neoliberal project in education as a process of colonisation, this paper considers the effects of what the authors argue amounts to a reconstitution of schooling in England. This argument examines how the narrative about education’s liberatory purposes in support of human flourishing that gained particular prominence in the social democratic consensus following 1945, is becoming eroded and subjugated by a neo-colonial imaginary. This disavows past connections to local communities and undermines a democratic polity. The ontological colonisation of schools and teachers by ways of working rooted in neoliberalism is examined by drawing on research on the lived experience of schools and Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) and the narratives of educators and leaders who are part of them. The narratives illustrate how such neo-colonial processes appear to appropriate and reconstitute teacher identities and shape schools’ connections with their communities. The authors analyse and interpret narratives of those in schools and the spaces to re-construct and re-imagine possible alternative futures.

‘Untangling the entangled knot’: a critical and genealogical examination of Multi-Academy Trusts’ (MATs) ideologies, power and governance in England

ABSTRACT The reduction in local control and oversight of schooling represented by the growth of Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) in England raises critical issues for public policy. These include the articulation and exercise of power in the governance of MATs, the future of democratic governance of local services and accountability. Applying Foucault’s genealogical framework, the paper analyses the antecedents of current governance arrangements and highlights and reinvigorates suppressed, delegitimised and belittled knowledges. The authors argue that the threads of representation, community engagement and local control in school governance are important components of democratic renewal. The paper examines the play of historical and contemporary factors which have fostered a discourse that enables the subjugation of agency, self-governance and autonomy of MAT constituent schools and their communities. This discourse has wider significance for the centralisation of decision making and control away from communities, and the erosion of the polity.

“There are strengths that are vast”

“There are strengths that are vast”

Engaging parents in multi academy trusts (MATs) as local civic knowledge experts

Parental engagement in multi-academy trusts’ (MATs) governance structures and activities is contemporarily constructed in policy as mattering less than engagement by professionalised governors and trustees, and in much of the literature as deficient for operationalising MAT accountability in a public education system. This article problematises the role of local parental engagement in MATs in a depoliticised context to explore an alternative conceptualisation responding to this democratic deficit. A single case study combined with narrative inquiry sought experience beyond the meta-narrative and Gunter and Ribben's conceptual frame of ‘knowledge, knowers and knowing’ provided a lens for interpreting data. Analysis identified that parental engagement was seen as a commodity in the justification of professional's decisions and an opportunity to normalise parent thinking and practices when engaging with the academy trust. Analysis of parents’ stories provided an alternative conceptualisation of parental engagement recognising their agency and contribution to knowledge production through their civic expertise.

The Schools White Paper (2022) and 'regimes of truth'

In this polemical piece, we begin by arguing that the Schools White Paper (2022) is framed within, and seeks to promulgate, a right-wing 'regime of truth'. We interrogate the vocabulary of the Paper to reveal and challenge its 'truths' – about the curriculum and its 'delivery'; the testing and examination regime; behaviour; and initial teacher education and the associated pedagogy. We then argue that the requirement for all schools to join 'strong' multi-academy trusts (MATs) is an intimate part of this agenda, not an optional add-on: the Department for Education employs MAT CEOs in every part of the system; MATs operate autocratically; and there is no local democratic control and no local accountability to communities, parents or children. All this reinforces and leaves unquestioned the centralised governmental control of schooling. We end with a call to fight to establish an alternative 'regime of truth' based on respect, reciprocity and democracy.

The rise and rise of academy trusts: continuing changes to the state-funded school system in England

ABSTRACT This paper delineates the growth of academy trusts in England before exploring government intentions to base the future state-funded school system on ‘strong’ multi-academy trusts. Academies, directly funded by the central government, first appeared in 2002 as an alternative to local authority-managed provision, with the initial intention of addressing continued underperformance of schools in urban areas. It was not until 2010, however, with an incoming Coalition government that the academisation process was widened, a policy seemingly driven by a desire to limit the influence of local authorities in line with principles of new public management (NPM). The number of academies increased dramatically (for a variety of reasons) to the point where now over half the school population are within them. Individual academies have, since the appointment of Regional School Commissioners in 2014, been encouraged to join formally with other academies as multi-academy trusts (MATs). Whilst by 2022 there were nearly 10,000 academies, most were in MATs with the government signalling its intention through a White Paper to base the future on them. The academisation process has featured several areas of concern, however, not all of which will be resolved by the policy statements contained in this proposal for new legislation.

It Goes Without Saying: How the Neoliberal Agenda is Endangering Inclusive Education

The UK education system is becoming increasingly dominated by exclusive economic and political ideology. The neoliberal agenda marketises young people and encourages them to take part in a competitive system. The rise of multi-academy trusts (MATs) further exacerbates an already inequitable system in which young people with special education needs and disabilities (SEND) are considered invaluable commodities. Coercive political tactics have allowed the education system to exist in this way without explicit questioning, and those in power benefit from withholding the opportunity to critique the system from educational practitioners. This article utilises Bourdieu's concept of doxa to explore the surreptitious privatisation of the UK education system and consider the implications of this agenda for inclusive education.

Executive Leadership and the Coupling Nature of the Relationship between Educational Organizations and Member Schools in England

ABSTRACT This paper draws on coupling and systems frameworks to investigate the relationships between two English Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) and their member schools in how decisions are made around budgeting, recruitment processes, and curriculum and assessment. Findings demonstrate when and under what conditions executive leaders and specifically CEOs, as primary agents of coupling, created greater consistency across schools either through centralization or deliberate alignment of school improvement planning, while operating within their complex institutional environments. Implications for practice, policy, and research on system-wide reform are discussed.

“Those in the know”: primary school literacy as a corporate field of knowledge?

ABSTRACT Using our re-readings of Margaret Meek Spencer’s work and career, we connect her scholarship to our mapping of contemporary changes in knowledge and our investigations of so-called “knowers”: those mobilising knowledge to underpin and control professionals’ enactment of policy in primary school literacy. Working from the theoretical resources of Basil Bernstein, we develop an analysis of these knowers’ production of knowledge, navigating from his conceptualisations of “official” and “pedagogical” fields into what we define as a “corporate” field of knowledge. Presenting data from our research into two groups - (i) commercial consultants, retailing policy solutions to professionals; and (ii) a Chief Executive officer and leaders within multi-academy trusts - we argue that working in a corporate field, these knowers have influence on professionals’ knowledge and positioning. We draw out speculative implications for readers of this journal concerning potential contributions to resistance as well as developing a reflexive approach to our own work.

Examining the competencies required for leadership of multi-academy trusts. Implications for a case study trust

ABSTRACT This paper examines competencies required for leadership of multi-academy trusts (MATs) to identify the learning experiences needed to make the transition to executive leadership (a concept perceived here as having accountability for multi-part organisations). As part of national government(s) drive to reduce the influence and control of local government over state-funded schools in England policies have been enacted, particularly since 2010, to create academies which were directly answerable to the Secretary of State for Education. Formed as a not-for-profit charitable company, each trust is composed of Members who act as guardians of the governance of the organisation, which is then given strategic direction by a Board of Trustees and executive leadership by a CEO. MATs consist of multiple academies, working to a single trust, and are the organisational model preferred by the Department for Education. In this paper MATs are equated to the concept of loosely-coupled organisations, formed of numerous constituent academies and held together much more loosely than a hierarchical structure would tolerate. Leadership competencies encompassed in the centrally National Professional Qualification for Executive Leadership (NPQEL) are considered inadequate generally and for the case study MAT explored here, leading the trust to introduce additional expectations of future senior leaders.

Inclusion in a multi‐academy trust: possibilities and perils

In this article we examine how, despite the understanding that a special school is not an inclusive setting, the senior leadership team (SLT) at Forest Academy Trust perceive their special schools as inclusive. Document reviews, interviews and a culminating focus group appear to indicate that possibilities for inclusive education may be related to a shared ethos of inclusion, resources, accessible opportunities, individualised approaches, and collaborative networks. These data also provide a critical insight into the perils related to inclusive education in multi‐academy trusts (MATs). The study of this MAT highlights the need for changes to policies, access to and equitable distribution of resources, curricular freedom balanced with accountability, a shift toward collaborative networking and partnership, and a shared vision for enactment, which may be leveraged in order to provide equitable and sustainable system‐wide inclusive practices.

The scheme of delegation as a sensemaking framework in multi-academy trusts in England: Useful tool or constraint?

Changes to the structure of English education because of decentralisation policy, particularly since 2010, have resulted in the creation of large groupings of schools – multi-academy trusts, organisations with multi-level governance structures, set out in schemes of delegation. Although the government has demanded absolute clarity on the role and remit of each part of the structure and the relationship and reporting between them, recent research suggests that there is little clarity or consistency in the role and function of board structures, with members often confused about their roles. This study draws on data from a funded project to examine: What level of consistency there is in multi-academy trust schemes of delegation, and what evidence is there that schemes of delegation align with sensemaking models of board members? The article concludes with a discussion on what the findings imply for use of schemes of delegation as useful tools for board member sensemaking in multi-academy trusts; revealing that although they can be useful tools for sensemaking, their usage varies a great deal between boards and board members.

Like a puppet on a string … exploring Headteachers’ perceived demise of Local Governing Bodies within an English Multi-Academy Trust

Multi-Academy Trusts (MAT) have developed organically in England since 2010. As a result, there appears to be a lack of consistency in the interpretation of delegated responsibilities of Local Governing Bodies (LGB). In a small-scale study of Headteacher (HT) accountability within one English MAT, governance was revealed as a major cause for concern. Accountability links between HT performance management, LGBs, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Trust Board were unclear. There was a perception of a lack of upward communication and an increase in local ‘rubber-stamping’ of MAT strategy. It is argued that, whilst LGBs are used as a form of ‘chain of command’ to monitor individual schools, their actual purpose may be operational; governed and limited by the Trust Board. LGBs appear to have lost their strategic influence in the conversion from maintained school to academy. I suggest that the term ‘Local Governing Body’ is potentially erroneous in its nomenclature, as some LGBs merely provide a middle level of ‘educational responsibility’ – puppets on a string.

Instructional reform and multiple institutional logics: insights from executive leadership in English Multi-Academy Trusts

ABSTRACT The systemic changes in the education policy landscape in England under the academies reform movement have nurtured a growing prevalence of educational organisations such as Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) operating as meso-level institutional actors that shape the implementation of policies and mediate between social structures and individual contexts and environments. This paper presents findings from an analysis of instructional improvement efforts in two MATs drawing on data from interviews with 13 executives and school leaders. Insights from neo-institutional theory provide an important lens for examining the ways in which logics of state, market and community influence executive leaders’ decisions and practices towards system-wide instructional reform. Findings demonstrate the different ways in which executive leaders perceived these logics influencing their actions and how school leaders experienced the expectations from the executive leaders in the wake of multiple accountability demands. The contextual analysis of institutional logics provides new knowledge on the perceived impact of the macro level policy development and implementation at the meso- and micro-level structures, beliefs and practices revealing the complexity of instructional reform.