Primary school headteachers are less likely to want to form large multi-academy trusts (MATs) than their secondary school peers, according to researchers.

Academics from Sheffield Hallam and Plymouth University say the “distinctive educational and institutional” differences between primary and secondary schools make academisation less attractive to many primary schools, and encourage stronger ties with local authorities.

“This presents a formidable challenge for the government’s vision of a fully academised school-led system,” the authors write in a paper due to be presented at a European conference next week.

The paper points out that in September 2016, 67 per cent of secondary schools were academies, compared to 21 per cent of primaries.

Although plans to force all schools to become academies were abandoned last year, Justine Greening, education secretary, said in a written statement in October 2016 that: “Our ambition remains that all schools should benefit from the freedom and autonomy that academy status brings. Our focus, however, is on building capacity in the system and encouraging schools to convert voluntarily.”

The paper states that the government wants to group schools into MATs with at least 10 to 15 schools, partly to create economies of scale.

National schools commissioner Sir David Carter has said the minimum size of a MAT should be 1,200 pupils and that many trusts will need to expand or merge to take in up to 20 academies.

The researchers find that, as of November 2016, there were 1,031 MATs comprising 4,003 schools - but 853 of the trusts had five academies or fewer.

Keeping multi-academy trusts small

When the researchers interviewed 10 primary heads - some in MATs, and some freestanding or in a federation - about system leadership in their local area, all of them thought it was “dangerous” for a school not to join with others in some kind of grouping: whether in a MAT, a teaching school alliance (TSA) or a federation. 

They felt this was in keeping with national policy and could mitigate financing and staffing difficulties.

All but one of the headteachers were opting to collaborate with nearby schools and support struggling schools, and thought it was valuable to engage with wider school-to-school support work carried out through the local authority.

However, their belief was that such collaboration should be built in a measured and organic way - with MATs kept small.

“It reflects a concern for all the children in the area, a moral purpose wider than that associated with their own ‘patch’,” the authors state.

The authors conclude that, in the primary sector, if many MATs remained small, it seemed that a significant proportion of them would only contain successful schools and so any argument for imposing a uniform way of working would be weak.

If the views of the majority of heads in their study were widespread, the researchers add, primary schools and local authorities would in future work together to create new area-wide systems with minimal competition and shared responsibilities for quality.

That, say the authors, would run counter to the idea of encouraging large MATs that were not based on a particular locality.

• The paper Emerging local education systems in England: How primary headteachers are crafting new school landscapes, is due to be presented on August 24, 2017 at the European Educational Research Association’s ECER 2017 conference in Copenhagen.

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and like Tes on Facebook