Since 2002 the UK government has pursued a policy of granting ‘academy’ status to state-funded schools in England to become independent and free of local authority (LA) control.  The original idea, formulated by the New Labour government elected in 1997, was to improve the quality of schools in deprived urban areas by establishing academies answerable directly to the Secretary of State for Education.  Although there had been previous attempts to liberate state-funded schools from local government, notably the establishment of Grant Maintained Schools by the Education Reform Act 1988, LAs remained in control of governance.  The notion of an ‘academy’ broke that mould and gave licence for alternative modes of provision and governance.

Academies are established as charitable (not-for-profit) companies, limited by guarantee, with a stated intent to be independent and autonomous.  Each academy’ s governance structure included Members (who act in a similar way to the shareholders of a company and invested with the power to change the name of the company or wind it up).  It is the role of members to endorse and safeguard the trust’s Memorandum of Association, to have an overview of the governance arrangements, to appoint other members and to add or remove trustees from the trust board.   ‘Trustee’ is the name given to a member of the board of directors with responsibility for directing the trust’s affairs, for ensuring that it is solvent, well-run and delivering the expected charitable outcomes.   The day-to-day management of an academy was to be conducted by the headteacher and their senior management team.

Despite concerted efforts to promote this policy through three successive Labour governments, there were only 207 academies in England in 2010 at the time a new coalition government was elected.  The incoming Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, was determined to end the latent power of LAs and sanctioned academisation as a fundamental principle of state-funded schooling.   Rapid growth followed and by November 2023 there were 10,553 open academies, a total which included Free Schools, Studio Schools, University Technical Colleges, Special Schools and Pupil Referral Units (DfE, 2023).

The academisation process made a substantive shift during the following years away from single academy trusts to the establishment of multi-academy trusts (MATs) which lead groups of academies.   Within MATs one academy trust is responsible for a master funding agreement, typically with a supplemental funding agreement for each academy.  MATs have subsequently become a core feature of policy for state-funded school provision in England with governmental ambition still set at full academisation of the school systems, ideally by 2030.   By November 2023 there were 1178 MATs, the vast majority of which have over three schools/settings, which manage 89 per cent of all academies.

One consequence of this process is a radical change in the relationships between stakeholders.  Academies in MATs no longer have the right a governing body as the legal decision-making forum which is representative of their locality, headteachers are no longer the key actor on individual academy resources and practices and the influence of the local authority has been severely curtailed.  Prior to 2002 each state-funded school In England was required to have its own governing body which demonstrated a balance between LEAs, parents and the teacher workforce.  Their devolved budget from the local authority at that time included most recurrent expenditure, including staffing.  The MAT now has total control over governance, with trustees determining policy and resource allocation.  The reality if often not so stark, however, with most MATs having democratic approaches to individual academy provision.  Nevertheless, relationships and the roles have been fundamentally changed.

The purpose of this research undertaken and reported here is to investigate how MATs function and, in particular, the relationships between those not only prominent in the governance structure (Members, Trustees and employed senior leaders), but also school governors and individual academy staff. Two research questions were developed from previous research by the author (Male, 2017, 2018 & 2019). 1. What operating structures and systems are evident in MATs? 2. How do participants (members, trustees, trust employees and local governing committees) perceive the effectiveness, efficacy and equity of those structures? The data to be reported to this conference comes from the use of a questionnaire developed on Microsoft forms. The process of developing and trialling the survey began with a series of interviews undertaken with stakeholders during March 2023. Nine participants from MAT #1, including a Member, a trustee, two central trust employees, three headteachers and a school governor engaged in a semi-structured interview, conducted via Microsoft Teams, to questions developed through extensive literature reviews and previous author research. Analysis allowed for the development of a questionnaire which was piloted in June 2023 in MAT #2 with a trustee, two central trust employees (including the CEO), three headteachers and a school governor. The pilot questionnaire and subsequent versions employed single answer questions for demographic data and Likert style questions with a standard five-point scale for the agree-disagree continuum (with a neutral point) which explored opinions of MAT operations and communications. After feedback from participants in Trust #2, amendments were made to the questionnaire which was then issued to four further MATs. MAT#1 had 135 total responses; MAT#2 had 126 total responses; MAT#3 had 106 total responses; MAT#4 had 105 total responses. In all four sets it was clear that further amendments were needed as some respondents misunderstood the position of Member. Nevertheless, valid remaining survey responses were analysed and fed back to the four MATs.

At the time of this proposal being submitted the revised final survey is now being circulated to multiple MATs across England. The emerging data will be analysed and first reported to the ECER Conference in Nicosia. This will be the first set of independent data which explores the functioning of MATs in England. Until now, the move to academisation (and MATs) has been based on an ‘ideological stance’ and not on secure evidence (Male, 2022: 332). Various, often disputed, claims have been made by the Department for Education about the efficiency, efficacy and equity of MATs, but there has been no independent enquiry. The research to be reported here may bring some light to the situation experienced in practice by stakeholders in MATs.

Department for Education (DfE), 2023 (November). Open academies, free schools, university technical colleges (UTCs) and studio schools and academy projects awaiting approval. Accessed 17 January 2024. Male, T. (2017). Leadership issues in emerging multi-academy trusts (MATs). Paper presented to European Conference for Educational Research, Copenhagen (August). Male, T. (2018). School governance and academisation in England. Paper presented to Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management (CCEAM) conference – Malta, November Male, T. (2019). Governance in multi-academy trusts (MATs) - Evidence from the field. Paper presented at European Conference for Educational Research, Hamburg, September. Male, T. (2022). The rise and rise of academy trusts: Continuing changes to the state-funded school system in England. School Leadership and Management, 42(4), 313-333. Ofsted. (2019). Multi-academy trusts: Benefits, challenges and functions. Accessed 17 January 2024.