Warwickshire Education Services

Joining or Setting up a Multi Academy Trust (G18-JSUMAT-C-01)

Duration: 2 hours

Time: 19:00 - 21:00

14 places available

Price: £100

Address: School House Lane, Walsgrave, Coventry CV2 2BA

Target Audience – governors, clerks, headteachers from all maintained schools

In late 2016, the government dropped plans to mandate conversion to academy status of Good

and Outstanding schools. However, DfE strategy continues to make clear the direction of travel:

it believes that for most schools, the most effective route for achieving structured collaboration

will be to set up or join a multi academy trust.

Against a background of teaching schools and system leadership, maintained schools are

considering their options. Schools will be increasingly dependent on school to school

collaboration to support their development, and to improve outcomes for their children.

Maintained school governing boards do not need to rush into a new partnership arrangement,

but we have had many requests from governors who are preparing now to ensure they have

the right information to make an informed choice for their school at the right time.

The purpose of this course is to summarise a range of choices around academy status and

other collaboration options, and to identify key questions for governors to consider. Delegates

will be introduced to the essentials:

• Why should we consider change – how might our pupils benefit?

• What is an academy? Who controls it?

• Due diligence: how will our school benefit in terms of leadership capacity, support, finances?

• Budget implications

• Legal implications

• Governance accountability and powers

• Professional and Staffing structures

A key message of the course is that the principal reason for change must be based on

improving pupil outcomes, and delegates will discuss lessons learned from some recent

academy conversions