New findings from the Education Policy Institute’s (EPI) interactive benchmarking tool finds that Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) tend to have higher teacher turnover than other school groups, but also higher balances.

Among secondary schools, multi-academy trusts have, on average, significantly-higher annual turnover of classroom teachers than local authorities and annual teacher turnover is even higher in larger MATs.

At primary level, MATs are around twice as likely to have positive in-year revenue balances compared to other group types; while at secondary, they are almost three times as likely to have positive in-year balances than other school groups, though, on average, they represent a smaller percentage of overall budgets than in primary.

The research also reveals that 90% of MATs in the survey used top-slicing – taking a fixed proportion of funding from all schools – rather than pooling funding across all schools.

On average they top sliced around 6% of school budgets.

The findings come as the EPI launches its complete interactive benchmarking tool, which compares the performance of individual academy trusts, local authorities, federations, and dioceses across four key performance indicators: Pupil attainment; pupil inclusion; workforce sustainability; and financial management.

Alongside the tool, EPI has published a new report that brings together findings from our benchmarking tool, along with results from its Decisions in Education in England (DEEP) survey of senior leaders working in school groups.

 

Key findings

On the school workforce 

MAT leaders identify recruitment as their biggest challenge.

Among secondary schools, multi-academy trusts have, on average, significantly higher annual turnover of classroom teachers than local authorities (16.9% in the median MAT, 14.4% in the median LA), and annual turnover is even higher in larger MATs (19.5% on average).

Although the report does not assume causality, at secondary, high teacher turnover is negatively correlated with overall attainment and post-16 destinations.

However, there is no such correlation between teacher turnover and the progress of both disadvantaged and low prior attaining pupils.

At primary, the report found no correlation between teacher turnover and headline KS2 attainment.

Similarly, higher levels of efficiency are associated with higher rates of classroom teacher turnover.

This suggests that teacher turnover is not necessarily a negative outcome if, for example, schools are adept at identifying and retaining only high-quality teachers, this could potentially help drive efficiencies.

 

On financial health 

At primary, MATs are around twice as likely to have positive in-year balances compared to other group types.

At secondary, they are almost three times as likely to have positive in-year balances than other school groups.

Around 90% of MATs used top-slicing (taking a fixed proportion of funding from all schools) rather than pooling funding across all schools. On average they top-sliced around 6% of school budgets.

Diocesan school groups typically self generate the largest fraction of their income, over 6% on average, while academy trusts have the lowest self-generated income. This may reflect the level of affluence of the communities which schools serve.

 

On pupil inclusion and attainment 

Larger MATs (with 10 or more schools in a phase) have, on average, higher rates of persistent absence, suspension, and unexplained exits than smaller MATs and local authorities.

However, these larger MATs admit greater rates of disadvantaged pupils and have higher attainment outcomes for low prior attaining and disadvantaged pupils.

Primary school groups linked to dioceses (MAT and non-MAT) have intakes that are less representative of their local area.

However, they have relatively low levels of persistent absence and relatively high overall attainment.​

Internal exclusions are not captured in national data collections, but findings from the DEEP survey indicate the use of internal exclusion is more prevalent in secondary schools – less than 3% of sampled secondary schools reported not using internal exclusion at all, in comparison with almost a quarter of primary schools.

 

Policy recommendations 

The EPI is calling on the Department for Education to publish easily-accessible metrics for school groups, in line with its approach of ‘trust quality descriptors’.

This would allow users to see the relative strengths and weaknesses of school groups and allow a more-informed understanding of their performance and how they reflect their local communities.

The accountability and inspection system should also be reviewed, and consideration should be given to how it can better reflect the different pupil demographics and circumstances of individual schools.

Schools that admit representative proportions of disadvantaged pupils, or those with additional needs, should not be penalised under any potential new system, the EPI says.

And the school admissions code should be reviewed with a focus on inclusion. In particular, it should consider why certain types of school groups (such as dioceses) appear to be less likely to reflect their local areas in terms of the number of pupils from low-income backgrounds that they admit.

Additionally, Consistent Financial Returns should move to collecting the income and expenditure of local authority education teams akin to the data reported by trusts on central teams through the Academies Accounting Return. This would allow for better comparisons between how trust central teams and local authorities top-slice and re-distribute grant income.

Louis Hodge, associate director for school system and performance at the EPI, said: “With large increases in academisation over the last decade, an increasing number of schools are now working as part of wider groups and networks.

“Yet our understanding of the relative strengths and weaknesses of different groups has, to date, been patchy and inconclusive.

“This new research provides a strong foundation on which to build a more rounded understanding of how school groups in England are performing.

“We hope it will enable informed conversations across the education sector about the features of effective school groups and how school groups can be supported to improve their performance.”