1. Dominic Herrington of the
The Big Picture: The future direction of multi-academy trusts
Dominic Herrington
Regional Schools Commissioner for South East and South London
November 2015

2. We face some big challenges in our education system
Challenge 1: Progression for the most vulnerable children
Challenge 2: Making sure that our most able children achieve
Challenge 3: Ensuring that the culture of Continuous Improvement is true in every school
Challenge 4: Preparation for the changing world of work
Challenge 5: Recognising that poverty and deprivation is not unique to urban areas
Challenge 6: Ensuring that there are enough great leaders and teachers

3. Academies are at the heart of the Government’s strategy to help improve schools
As of 1 November there are 5411 open academies and free schools.
65% of secondary schools and 18% of primary schools are academies.
Academies make up around 23% of all schools, and employ 40% of all education staff and educate 37% of children.
Academy growth since September 2010
5411 open academies, free schools, studio schools and UTCs 3

4. Role of the Regional Schools Commissioners
Main responsibilities:
Monitor the performance of academies
Take action when an academy is underperforming
Decide on the development of new academies
Address underperformance in maintained schools through sponsored academies
Make recommendations to Ministers about free school applications
Encourage organisations to become academy sponsors
Approve changes to open academies
Chosen due their extensive knowledge as education practitioners
What do RSCs not do?
Intervene in well-performing academies: RSCs do not have a role in relation to academies that are performing well, except perhaps to encourage them to become a sponsor or support another school.
Provide improvement themselves: An RSC may encourage academies needing school improvement to access support from Teaching School Alliances, National Leaders of Education (NLEs), and other sector-led school improvement in their region.
Maintained schools: RSCs have no remit in relation to maintained schools, other than providing advice on sponsor matches. RSCs’ only interactions with good and outstanding LA maintained schools is to make decisions regarding any applications to convert to academy status.
Financial underperformance: RSCs do not have a direct role in tackling academy financial underperformance; this is led by the EFA. However RSCs can report any concerns about an academy’s finances to the EFA.
Preventing extremism: RSCs do not have a direct role in tackling extremism but will add local intelligence to strengthen the DfE due diligence process.  RSCs will also work with local authorities, Ofsted and others to ensure that any concerns are identified and reported to the DfE.

5. Headteacher Boards
Providing additional expertise
In the SESL region, HTB members have advised in a wide range of contexts, such as:
diagnosing issues and offering Trust advice
encouraging outstanding academies to become MATs and support other schools.
Each RSC gets support from a Headteacher board (HTB) of 6-8 experienced educational leaders.
They advise and challenge RSCs, bringing in additional educational expertise and local knowledge.
Four members are elected by academy headteachers
Up to four further members appointed or co-opted.

6. Towards a self-managing, self-improving regional system…
RSC
HTB
MATs
Other academies and free schools
Teaching School Alliances (TSAs) 6

7. Benefits of Multi Academy Trusts…
Collective responsibility for the results of all children
Flexibility to deploy staff in the most effective way to benefit the largest number of children
Career Progression / Retention for staff
Economies of Scale
Procurement and bulk purchasing
Trust Appointments on behalf of the schools
Trust Leadership Structure that incorporates Executive Heads, Curriculum leadership
Transmission of the best practice into some/all schools
Strategic Governance allied to educational focus at LGB 7

8. MATs allow strength in numbers while retaining identity
Ensures entitlement to the best education possible
Systems and Operating procedures
Data Collection Points
Common Exam Syllabi
Assessment and Reporting
Key Educational Policies
HR practice as one employer
Not in every respect
Culture of the school
Uniform
Enrichment
Relationship with the local community
Educational networks unique to the school 8

9. The Ten Steps to become a successful MAT
There are a growing number of tools to help develop MATs
The ‘Ten Steps…’ has been developed as a matrix tool of 9 areas for MATs to evaluate how well they are doing and to identify next steps
The 9 characteristics seek to establish categories of development against four possible stages of maturity: Beginning, developing, embedding, leading
An expectation of a maturing MAT is that they begin to play a role in the system beyond their own Trust.
Where can people get these???
The creation of new multi-academy trusts (MATs) has been a highly visible element of the regional landscape since the Regional Schools Commissioners came into their posts in September During 2014/15, increasing work has been undertaken to help academies that are creating MATs to understand better the expectations we have. It is also helpful to create a definition of success for those MATs that have been in operation for some time, as we support them to become strong, improvement-focused and sustainable. The system is maturing and we need to recognise that maturity is not just about doing more of the same better. It is about recognising that the smallest MATs as well as the largest can self-evaluate in the same way; an expectation of a maturing MAT is that they begin to play a role in the system beyond their own Trust. This document seeks to establish a working definition that categorises the development of each characteristic against four possible stages of maturity.
Beginning – this early stage is an indicator that the Trust is new and that whilst the characteristic has been identified as being important, the progress within the characteristic is embryonic and developmental. Trust activity is focused on oversight and structures as the culture and ethos is established in the schools.
 Developing – this moves beyond the embryonic and it is clear that the Trust has started to drive improvement and strategy to embed stronger practice in the schools to sustain their improvement. Key improvements are shared across the Trust.
 Embedding – this moves to a more concise model of Trust influence where some of the systems and structures that the Trust wants to embed are now in place and making a difference. Staff work together through Trust co-ordinated work and independent collaborative groups that staff set up themselves.
 Leading – A MAT that is leading will be influencing practice beyond its own organisation. Momentum towards collaboration is now significantly beyond the act of working together to the common understanding and ability to articulate exactly how collaboration works and enables change to be sustained. 9

10. What are the Nine Characteristics of Successful MATs
Well communicated strategic vision & plan
Clear accountability framework for Trust performance
Clear quality assurance systems
Clear delegated governance framework
Trust-wide school improvement strategy
Systematic programme of school to school support
Skilled management of Trust Risk indicators
Clear succession plan for the key posts within the MAT
Trust-wide commitment to making a contribution beyond the MAT
Step 1 - there is a well communicated strategic vision & plan that moves seamlessly from implementation into impact. The school improvement plan can only be delivered through support from the Trust and the Trust priorities can only be delivered through the academies
Step 2 - there is a clear accountability framework for the performance of the Trust that all staff understand, including what happens when key staff under-perform 10

11. The Education and Adoption Bill heralds further change to help raise standards
Will provide new and strengthened powers to intervene in underperforming maintained schools.
Designed to speed up the process by which the worst schools are transformed, removing bureaucracy and scope for delaying tactics.
Action will be taken from day one to turn every failing school into an academy, giving sponsors clear responsibility and freedom to transform schools.
The Bill also tackles schools which are coasting along at ‘just good enough’ and are not fulfilling the potential of their pupils. 
   
Action will be taken from day one to turn every failing school into an academy, giving sponsors clear responsibility and freedom to transform schools and to give children the excellent education they deserve.
The Bill also tackles schools which are coasting along at ‘just good enough’ and are not fulfilling the potential of their pupils.  All children should be given the chance to succeed and this Bill ensures that coasting schools can be challenged and supported to become excellent.   
It will authorise RSCs to issue academy orders to maintained schools judged Inadequate by Ofsted, requiring them to become sponsored academies.
The bill will extend our powers into coasting schools – schools that have shown a prolonged period of underperformance and are not supporting their pupils to make the progress they should.
It will allow RSCs to identify additional support for coasting schools. If the school doesn’t have a sufficient plan or capacity to bring about improvement, RSCs can progress academisation, bringing in new leadership
The bill will also give RSCs power to issue warning notices to schools that are otherwise underperforming.

12. The Big Challenges Leadership – has to come first remember 80%!
Executive leadership – CEO
Governance
Sponsors
Money 12

13. Conclusion
The academies programme remains one of the Government’s highest priorities: the structural enabler to raise standards
It allows for intervening in failing schools by replacing poor governance under the guidance of an expert sponsor, while protecting the freedoms of high-performing schools.
The regional self-managing, self-improving system gives outstanding leaders freedom to innovate and moves decision-making and accountability to local experts.
The school system will increasingly be built largely on MATs which are most likely to achieve educational excellence everywhere for our children and young people.
Your country needs you to build the real self-managing, self-improving school system! 13
I firmly believe that a school system that is built largely on MATs and overseen by RSCs is the direction of travel that is most likely to achieve the educational success the greatest number of our children and young people. When the MAT gets it right, the schools become part of greater whole and no longer see themselves as individual entities. When the corporate structure is right, governance becomes stronger and leadership is properly distributed and developed from the outstanding leaders at the top. Talented staff are able to impact on the lives of all children in the MAT, grow their careers in a range of environments and, of course, significant savings are made by the centre that can release more resource for teaching and take away administrative tasks from teachers. And when things go wrong decisions about interventions are made locally, by educational experts who have a range of options to draw on from sponsorship, teaching schools alliances and school-to-school support.
Taken together all of these measures should be a clear sign of this Government’s determination to ensure that educational excellence is available to every single child.

14. Any questions or comments? 14