Male, T; (2019) Governance in multi-academy trusts (MATs) - Evidence from the field. In: Proceedings of ECER 2019. (pp. pp. 1-22). European Educational Research Association (EERA): Hamburg, Germany.

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Abstract

There has been a fundamental shift in school governance in England, triggered by the rapid expansion of academies since 2010, which means nearly half the pupils in statemaintained schools no longer have a governing body as the legal decision making forum for their school. Instead, schools becoming academies have been formed into companies, limited by guarantee, working in a direct relationship with central government. Furthermore, the majority of academies are now in multi-academy trusts (MATs) which are multi-school organisations with one board of trustees. School governors typically now only have delegated tasks and responsibilities, with accountability having now been transferred to the trust which runs the MAT. The research reported here is drawn from interviews conducted with senior executives of MATs during the calendar years of 2017 and 2018. A key part of each interview was to examine the way in which governors were contributing across the trust. The data generally demonstrated schemes of delegation that allow individual schools to continue to have governance at the institutional level, albeit without the previous legitimatised power and accountability. The investigation did reveal some alarming aspects of school governance within trusts, however, which have the potential to allow behaviour that is illegitimate or immoral.

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