The school system in England has evolved into a complex landscape of multi-academy trusts (MATs), single-academy trusts (SATs) and hybrid arrangements. This has brought many strengths, but it has also created deep structural challenges that the sector has been reluctant to confront.
A moment of honesty is now required because we are entering the next phase of the system, and its success will depend on whether we can face up to some uncomfortable truths.
One of these truths is simple: England has far too many trusts.
How many academy trusts are there?
There are roughly 2,050 academy trusts in operation today. Around 1,200 of these are MATs, and around 850 are SATs.
This scale was not the original intent. It is the result of policy drift, disjointed decision making over many political cycles and a period in which growth was encouraged without sufficient regard for coherence.
The outcome is a fragmented system that cannot deliver the full benefits of deep collaboration or shared expertise.
If we are serious about building a trust-led system that works for pupils, staff, communities and the taxpayer, then we will need far fewer organisational units.
My view is that England should have no more than 400 trusts and that we should try to achieve this by 2030. Such trusts would be large enough to be educationally and financially resilient, yet small enough to sustain meaningful regional coherence.
I believe this is the direction Treasury officials, policymakers and system architects quietly agree with. It is also the direction implied by the new Schools Bill, which includes an ambition for all schools to be part of a group.
The choice of the word “group” is intentional. It avoids ideological debate about MATs and allows for local-authority-led structures or federations. Yet the underpinning principle is the same: schools should not remain isolated. The future is one in which groups of schools share governance, share resources and share purpose.
However, if consolidation is the logical direction, the question then becomes: why has the system not already reached this endpoint?
The ‘human barrier’
The answer lies in a second uncomfortable truth: consolidation requires many current CEOs to lose their jobs.
Based on the most recent data, I estimate that there are currently around 1,300 CEOs across the academy system. If we move to a system of 400 trusts, that number will fall by about 1,000.
The financial implications of this single structural shift are extraordinary. Losing the existing salaries of 1,000 CEOs would release around £140 million annually to be invested directly into children and classrooms. And that’s not to mention the huge savings of reducing duplication of other MAT central team roles.
Some of the most talented professionals in the system are currently locked into roles that are organisationally necessary only because the system is so fragmented. There are multiple executive head, director of secondary and director of curriculum roles, to name just a few.
With fewer trusts, these people could instead be running schools - making a dent in the acute shortage of headteachers.
Consolidation would allow these leaders to contribute their expertise more directly to improving schools and supporting children, rather than sustaining duplicated structures that add cost without adding value.
Clearly, and understandably, this presents a human barrier.
Next phase of the academy system
CEOs are the people with the formal authority to recommend or resist mergers. They are also the people whose livelihoods and sense of identity would be placed at risk by those mergers. These are individuals with families, mortgages, ambitions and genuine pride in their organisations.
Many have given 20 or 30 years of their working life to the schools they now lead. No one can reasonably expect them to usher in their own redundancy.
This is the perverse incentive at the heart of the system. The very people who hold the keys to consolidation are the people who stand to lose the most from it.
A national approach that acknowledges this reality would help. The way forward must involve dignity, practical support and a clear path for current leaders into new lives.
Some will become regional hub directors. Some will move into system leadership. Some will pursue portfolio careers, consultancy or governance roles.
A humane transition plan is a prerequisite for moving the system in the direction it needs to go. There is, however, another challenge that cannot be ignored. The next phase of the academy system cannot simply be about fewer and larger trusts. It must also be about place.
Regional coherence
Many trusts have expanded by acquiring schools wherever there happened to be opportunity. The result is that large numbers of headteachers do not have a genuine peer network. They find themselves working in small, atomised pockets within organisations that span vast geographies.
Yet a school in Blackpool cannot form a strong collaborative partnership with a school in Bournemouth. A trust will find it exceptionally difficult to build a coherent educational culture when its leaders rarely meet in person and have no shared local reality.
Consolidation without community will fail. It will create structures that look efficient on paper but feel hollow in the places where children learn and teachers work.
Regional defensibility must, therefore, become a defining principle of the next phase. Trusts need to be shaped around real geographies.
Trusts need clusters of schools that are within reach of one another. Headteachers need to sit together in rooms, solve local problems, share staff, exchange practice and feel part of a genuine professional family. Talented teachers need the option to progress without leaving their communities.
A trust should be able to explain why these schools belong together and why they serve a specific community.
Cultural shift
This is possible only when the trust footprint makes sense on the ground. It is rarely possible when schools sit hundreds of miles apart.
For this to become a reality, we will need a cultural shift. Some leaders have come to view success as the number of schools in their trust, as if scale were a sign of quality. This creates a competitive and combative landscape in which CEOs hold on to schools even when another trust would give those pupils a better offer.
That instinct is understandable in a system that has rewarded growth, but it is not why most of us chose education as a career. There are nine million children in England’s schools, and our responsibility is to all of them, not only those within our own organisational boundaries.
If a school would thrive more securely in another trust, then it is right and honourable to make that happen. The purpose of a trust is not to accumulate assets. The purpose is to do what is best for every child, everywhere.
Coherence versus expansion
Alongside this, we also need clearer expectations for the conduct of trust leaders. CEOs should act, and be seen to act, as stewards of a public system rather than proprietors of organisational territory.
They should consider each decision through a simple test: if my job depended on it, would I still believe this to be the right outcome for the pupils involved?
Isolated schools within large trusts should be reviewed honestly, with open conversations between neighbouring trusts about where those schools can thrive.
There are good examples of this already. The recent decision by Ormiston Academies Trust to transfer Ormiston Park Academy to Unity Schools Partnership demonstrates leadership that puts children above organisational footprint. The sector needs more decisions of that kind.
If the system is to consolidate to around 400 trusts, each trust must be regionally coherent. This will be challenging for some of the largest MATs, where schools are often spread across the country. Some will choose to reorganise into regional divisions. Some will choose to reshape entirely.
None of this is easy. All of it is necessary.
The academy system has reached a point where the next gains in performance will come from coherence rather than expansion, from collaboration rather than fragmentation and from trust structures that reflect the daily life of schools rather than the inheritance of past policy cycles. This requires courage. It requires honesty.
Long-term needs
Above all, it requires a willingness to put the long-term needs of children ahead of the short-term comfort of adults.
If we can do that, we can build a system that is stronger, more resilient and more humane.
A system where schools are part of meaningful local communities. A system where leaders work together rather than alone. A system where public money is used wisely. A system that future generations of teachers and pupils will thank us for.
The next phase of education in England must be about building something coherent, something rational and something worthy of the children we serve. Consolidation will help us achieve this.
Mark McCourt is chief executive officer of Academy Transformation Trust
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