More articles questioning the Multi Academy Trust (MAT) approach that had been so lauded by the Conservatives have been sent to me this past week. They make for very interesting reading for those of us opposed to academisation.
Last week the DfE announced the scrapping of the trust capacity fund, trust establishment and growth fund and academy conversion grants. There is talk of legislation to be put into place to make academies follow the national curriculum, and importantly to return to cooperating more closely with councils.
Jack Dyson’s article in SchoolWeek (07.11.24) comments that academy trusts with “top-down management cultures” are under scrutiny, with the new government seeking “to curtail the freedoms of the academies sector.”
This week, Sir Kevin Collins (a non-executive director at the DfE) has voiced his opinion on the flaws of the MAT system. He is concerned about teachers’ well-being and agency. Referring to the growth of a “narrow compliance culture”, he expressed his concerns that he’d “never seen teachers more enslaved”, in some cases “being told what to do” in “every lesson”.
In another interesting article, in Yorkshire Bylines: ‘Education MATters: exploring England’s state school industry’ (07.11.24), Dr Pam Jarvis discusses some of the murkier financial aspects of some MATs over the years. I won’t go into that, but do read the article. She makes some extremely interesting points about MATs spending less on teacher salaries than LEAs, and more on management. And regarding staff being younger and less experienced -and obviously cheaper - at MATs too.
She mentions a recent Campaign for State Education (CASE) report by Warwick Mansell, in which: “statistics indicate that, when comparing a large MAT to a similar sized LEA area, the implication is that the MAT is likely to be spending £6.7 million less on classroom teachers and educational support staff than is typical in the LEA-maintained sector, but will be operating at a higher cost to the public purse.”
Teachers’ agency, confidence and morale is clearly being eroded - despite assurances from MAT leaders that this would not happen. Turnover is much higher in MATs. Dr Jarvis states that “in some large MATs were leaving their jobs at twice the rate of teachers in LEA schools”.
Teaching unions can take little solace in the fact that we had clearly warned that this would happen. I can only hope that the government truly is moving in the direction the articles suggest. At the moment academisation is supposedly irrevocable. This must change. We must have a system where the voices of everyone involved in education, and especially those in classrooms, can be heard and valued.
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