Leaders and staff at multi-academy trusts are facing a great deal of pressure. Tightening budgets, recruitment and retention, people management and development and pupil attendance are just some of the issues they face, according to our second annual MAT Leaders Survey (see panel for key findings), carried out during the summer.
With those findings in hand, we gathered a panel of highly experienced and respected MAT leaders for a round table to dig deeper into these and other issues. Their insights were fascinating.
Funding challenges
As our survey showed that balancing the budget was a top priority for leaders, it was unsurprising that the topic was front-of-mind for our panel members.
Canon Peter Bruinvels, Governor at Priory Church of England Secondary School, Dorking, predicted an increasingly challenging time for the education financial landscape in coming years. 'We have the cost of living and pupil numbers may not always grow,' he said. 'There's also going to be a demand, I think, from the private education sector with a lot of parents no longer able to afford to keep their children in those schools, so they'll be coming across to the state sector.'
He added: 'We’re going to have to keep an eye on costs. Every single cost centre will need to be looked at carefully.”
Pooling reserves of non-pupil funding allows Broadleaf Partnership Trust in Sutton Coldfield to direct money where it could be most effective.
'I think another really important thing is to have a solid reserves and investment policy and that's backed up in our trust by a strong reporting and analytical focus on cash flow so that we can ensure we've got the best balance of returns,” said CEO Claire Pritchard.
Another important focus in budget management at Broadleaf Partnership Trust is energy efficiency. 'Energy efficiency is threaded through all of our MAT strategies, from our estate strategy to our digital strategy,' Claire added.
Tight financial management shouldn’t compromise core priorities, said Nicola Johnson, Director of HR at Prince Albert Community Trust in Birmingham. 'As a sector, it can often be that when we look at cost savings we want to squeeze as much as we can out of people, but we can’t lose sight of the basics and wellbeing support and mental health support still need to be in place,' she said. 'That needs good basic management, being watchful for staff who are struggling with their workloads and trying to identify any patterns which might suggest issues with stress and wellbeing.'
Organisational culture
The Confederation of Schools Trusts’ discussion paper 'Building Strong Trusts' outlines critical elements of a robust organisational culture, including workforce resilience and financial operations – areas which MATs found especially challenging in our survey.
The survey also revealed that 40% of respondents did not have a people strategy or written people plan in place – cited as another major element of robust schools in the CST report.
Schools struggling with finance and operations shouldn’t keep it to themselves, said Peter Bruinvels. 'Sharing your concerns with others, perhaps schools in your MAT, and knowing that you're not alone I think is really important,' he said. 'We obviously recognise that funding does depend on the numbers of pupils on roll, but of course, more than 90% of the cost of running the school will be staffing. You need to compare notes, see what resources you can borrow or exchange, perhaps consider more TAs if that's not unlawful and be prepared to do some cost-cutting. But make sure you keep the parents informed.'
For Nicola Johnson, many MATs and schools hadn’t embraced a people strategy because they saw them as enormously complex. 'That fear is inflated,' she said. 'They are important because you need a clear, simple perspective of what resources you have, what you need and where the gaps are.
'In its simplest form, it doesn't need to be complex. Break it down to each school, discipline and department if you need to, and ask a range of questions to assess the skills you currently have and what skills you need now and in the medium and long term. I think once you stop thinking of the people strategy as this really big colourful document and actually see it as a living breathing way of staffing your schools and your MAT then it does become easier.'
Recruitment and retention
According to the Strictly Education survey, pay remains a crucial factor for staff recruitment in retention, with 88% acknowledging its impact. Most respondents felt their schools and maps were successful in attracting and retaining employees with 66% planning to continue in education, which makes an improvement on the survey run last year, which was at 57%. But a significant portion of staff still intend to leave.
Values and ethos are key to attracting and retaining employees, said Nicola Johnson. 'All of our schools are in the inner city and we serve communities that have high levels of deprivation. That is part of our attraction to some people, especially if they come from those communities or if they have served those communities in other job roles,' she explained. 'They make a conscious decision to work in inner-city schools. We've also got a free school which is in its third year of operation and there is a strong ethos of building and contributing towards the future. That is part of the pull, but I do realise that we can’t just rely on this and that we need to do more.'
Competition from other sectors with more flexibility in work patterns and salaries has made recruitment harder in recent years, said Claire Pritchard. 'We haven't yet quite worked out as a sector how to do that well,' she said. 'It means that we have to double down on our efforts to find the right people. We are really looking hard at our job adverts and making sure that they're really authentic. We put a lot of time and effort into the language and the feel of that advert so that we're illustrating our culture right from the outset and the value that employees will get when they join us.'
At Nicola Johnson’s trust, 80% of its leadership started their teaching careers in the trust’s schools. 'Career development has been key to that,' she says. 'We’ve set out clear career pathways, identifying people early on that we know are going to be good leaders, and then supporting them through that. We do of course lose people, but we keep them within the sector.'
Job satisfaction, morale and stress remain a concern, according to our survey, with 85% reporting varying degrees of workplace stress. The cost of living crisis has a part to play, with a quarter feeling a significant impact and 54% reporting some effect. Respondents have taken steps to address some of these concerns, including resource signposting, and promoting assistance programs.
Regular staff surveys are key if MATs are to keep a close watch on these issues, said Peter Bruinvels. 'Morale is key. I'm a service chaplain, so I offer pastoral care to the staff as well. We've embedded this in our policies. We need to show that we appreciate them and the headteachers need to work really closely with the staff.
'As a governor, I encourage governors to go in the staff common room when they have an inset day because it’s really important that they have the opportunity to empathise with the teachers.'
The real challenge for all schools and MATs is to meet the demands of staff to have a better work-life balance. 'We have developed an employee assistance programme, but people want that flexible working,' Peter said. 'We were showing during COVID that it can work; that people can work in different places and at different hours and still deliver effective work.
'We've got to find creative ways of meeting this demand while we're meeting the demands of Ofsted and the curriculum. We do grant more flexible working requests than ever before, but we need to move away from just being reactive and find creative, proactive ways of making their work-life balance better.'
For Claire Pritchard, an open-door culture will help schools and MATs address staff stress. 'A leader is never going to spot everything, but if you have that culture of open communication then they should be made aware.'
Embracing strategies that enhance efficiency and cut workload is another possible answer to questions of stress and wellbeing. 'Something as simple as putting out job adverts can be transformed with the right support and the right package,' said Nicola Johnson. 'Removing unnecessary administrative processes which ultimately don't add value is really important. Looking at these unnecessary processes that don’t add value while trying to find a better and more efficient way give staff back some time to do what they’re there to do, which is to support children and families.'
Pupil attendance
Pupil attendance is high on the list of concerns for MAT and school leaders, an issue highlighted by our survey and explored in Public First research, a theme that was explored by our panel.
'COVID encouraged children to stay away and they got used to it,' Peter Bruinvels said, adding that this may have been a more pronounced issue in larger MATS which seemed more remote to families. 'We’ve got to have more of an emphasis on making learning fun, involving the children If they're not involved enough.' Measures at the Priory School included mentors and playground buddies and encouraged pupils to come into school in their non-school clothes if they had a PE session that day.
For Claire Pritchard, having sound systems for tracking pupil attendance was central to success. 'Having the right information and a qualified attendance team who can focus on analysing that data is the first thing that is going to make a big difference,' she said. 'The next step for us is treating each case individually. There is the DfE best practice attendance and there is a danger that people see this as the blueprint and re-enact their case studies to the letter, but actually, each child's story and each parent's circumstances are very different. What’s made the biggest difference for us is engaging with the parents early.'
She added: 'Public First’s attendance paper has provided a useful insight into the parental shift in attitude towards attendance post-COVID and I think that reflects our experience in many ways. We've seen a number of cases where parents talk about the fact that online learning was good enough during COVID, so why not now?
'In those cases, it's been fundamental to get around the table with them and share with them why distance learning failed us as a sector and shift their mindset away from it just being about the academic benefits of the learning. There are social benefits of attendance and belonging to that school and community.'
CPD
While a significant majority (88%) of survey respondents acknowledged the positive impact CPD has on professional growth, more than half (57%) faced obstacles accessing it over the past year. Funding limitations and time constraints were cited as key factors that limited their ability to engage in CPD opportunities.
Recognising that staff need time to access CPD and recognising it as an investment was crucial, said Nicola Johnson. 'Making access to CPD and safeguarding time for it as part of your workforce plan is time well spent. Factoring in cover costs and subjecting it to a cost-benefit analysis is also important. When we look back, that approach really delivered for us because 80% of our leadership team members started with us as newly qualified teachers and half of our business leads began their careers with us. That’s a definite return on investment.'
Looking at the apprenticeship levy more closely can help to increase the funding available for professional development, she added. 'The amount of qualifications that can get funded through the apprenticeship levy is astonishing.'
Nicola added: 'People are scared of developing their staff because they might they leave. But if we don't develop them our kids will suffer, and they only get one chance.'
CPD is a vital retention tool, said Peter Bruinvels. 'If you don't have CPD you're going to miss out and you may lose staff if they are not allowed to have that career development.
'We've got to find the time to cover it – got to be certain that the qualifications and the development they're going for are valid and valuable. And we do have to accept that if they do get that CPD then they might want to move on.'
PANEL on key survey findings
Strictly Education carried out a survey of MAT leaders during the summer of 2023 to measure their views on a range of leadership and management issues.
Key findings included:
- The top three challenges for the future were staff workload and stress, education funding and staff recruitment – unchanged from our 2022 survey.
- Education funding appears to be a bigger worry for leaders from MATs when compared to those from SATs, with 80% of MAT participants mentioning funding as opposed to 69% of SATs.
- Stress is an ever-present issue for most of our respondents: 85% were stressed at work to some degree (46% sometimes, 21% usually, 8% always), with stress more prevalent in MATs than SATs.
- Pay is the key to staff recruitment and retention, according to our survey, with 88% agreeing that it had an impact.
- 40% of schools and trusts did not have a people strategy or written people plan in place, increasing to 49% of all MATs and SATs.
- The vast majority of respondents had implemented energy efficiency measures which had had a positive impact on the overall budget and resources.
- HR, financial and budget management and reporting take up the greatest portion of leaders’ time.
- When it comes to adopting systems that could make the management of non-attendance easier, almost a quarter of MATs (23%) had different management information systems which made attendance analysis challenging.
The full survey results are available at https://www.strictlyeducation.co.uk/ebooks/MAT-Leaders-Survey-Report-2023
Barry Smith is Head of Business Development at Strictly Education, which provides professional support, advice and guidance to more than 2,000 schools, 900 academies and 180 MATs across the country.