What will the new Labour government mean for multi-academy trusts?

The election campaign put the normal business of government on hold.  

It meant no new Academy Trust Handbook. No news on school funding. No response to the School Teachers’ Review Body recommendations on teachers’ pay. 

It also left schools without any official certainty about what might happen to Conservative policies on MAT growth.   

We now have a new government that has pledged to focus on “delivery and service” – but which has also warned of big challenges ahead. With intense pressure on education and on school budgets, MAT leaders will be keen to see what life under Labour will be like.

What we know about Labour and MATs 

Here’s some of what we know so far about Labour’s approach to schools and to MATs in particular. 

Who’s in charge 

Bridget Phillipson is the new Education Secretary, with academies and free schools in her brief. Catherine McKinnell is Schools Minister, with Anneliese Dodds, Stephen Morgan, Janet Daby on the ministerial team. Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is Education Minister in the House of Lords.  

‘Agnostic about school structures’ 

Sir Kevan Collins, former education recovery adviser, joins the DfE as a non-executive board member. He told a TES event before the election that he was “pretty agnostic about structures” when it came to schools and was unhappy about any “personal obsessions around ideology in education that isn’t linked to the evidence and about driving outcomes”. 

That would seem to chime with remarks made by Phillipson in opposition, when she said Labour was “not interested in wholesale structural reform” of schools and that the distinction between academies and maintained schools “mostly means nothing to parents”. 

News on pay awards and funding has had to wait!

Bridget Phillipson told school staff on July 16 that there would be no announcement on teachers’ pay that week – or on indicative school funding allocations.

“We know there is an urgency around that and we are working across government to act as quickly as we can,” she said.

She subsequently added that the pay announcement would come “later this month”.  

Education was a key part of the King’s Speech 

The King’s Speech, laying out the new government’s priorities for its first year, contained a long list of measures connected with education. 

Among those that could affect MAT finances are: 

• A requirement for free breakfast clubs in every primary school.
• Bringing multi-academy trusts into the inspection system
• Requiring all new teachers to have, or be working towards, qualified teacher status.
• Giving support staff a voice in pay and conditions.  
  
  

What don’t we know? 

Will the teachers’ pay rise be affordable?  

Last year, teachers were awarded a 6.5% pay rise – and 3.5% of that had to come from school budgets rather than central government. 

It’s expected that this year’s settlement will be lower – although The Times has reported that the review body’s recommendation is 5.5%, compared with the 3% budgeted by the government.  

With 44% of headteachers expecting to set a deficit budget next year, according to a poll by Teacher Tapp, schools will want to know how any pay rise will affect them. 

What about the last government’s MAT ambitions? 

The Conservative government was, at one point, intending to pass into law a target that all schools should be in an academy trust consisting of at least 10 schools or 7,500 pupils by 2030. 

That provision was dropped, but the last government clearly favoured MATs as the way to go. 

Pepe Di’Iasio, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, has called on Labour “to provide clarity over whether the ambition that all schools should be part of multi-academy trusts still stands”. 

Will MATs keep growing regardless? 

With or without government targets, it’s likely that MATs will continue to get bigger. Analysis carried out recently by Schools Week shows MATs consolidating, with trusts now averaging 4.8 schools, up from 3.1 in 2019. The number of standalone trusts fell by a third to just over 1,100 in that time.  

Education Datalab found that, if current trends continue, all secondary schools would be in MATs by 2031 and all schools by 2041. 

Expect news to happen fast 

The new government has an overflowing in-tray and has said public services won’t be transformed overnight. But with ministers under instructions to get their initiatives started, it’s likely that education news will soon be coming at us fast. 

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