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RSA
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Schools White Paper: a renewed drive for academisation
Tuesday 24th February 2026
Selecting the right Trust for your school: bespoke support for school leaders and school communities
Rightly, much of the discussion around the just published Schools White Paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, is focused on proposed reforms to a SEND system that is widely seen as broken – resource-hungry and yet often inaccessible to those who need it most.
But another area of focus for the White Paper, that of school collaboration and, more specifically, academisation is worthy of attention and, if delivered, is also likely – like the proposed SEND reforms – to impact profoundly on the organisation of our schooling.
Here, the Secretary of State is clear: in future, no school will be an island. Instead, Bridget Phillipson wants every school to sit within a “high-quality” trust, such that “the brilliant practice happening in some schools does not stay locked behind their gates – it flows to every classroom, every child, every community”.
Against this background, leaders of maintained schools and single academy trusts will be reflecting on the important decisions that they, in due course, are likely to be called upon to make, decisions that may have a significant impact on their school communities for years to come.
But how do you select a trust that is right for your school, a trust that reflects your values and meets your needs, a trust that widens opportunities for your children, your staff and your families? And how might the prospect of a new cadre of local authority and local area partnership-based trusts widen your options and impact on the wider MAT landscape? To date, the trust system has grown organically with sporadic encouragement from central government but little central design. As a result, trusts have very different styles and very different operating systems, leadership structures and governance arrangements. How do you choose the trust that is right for you? And what about the mechanics of academisation, schemes of delegation, school autonomy, the new focus on the importance of locality and all of that?
To this end, my core offer is a two-hour guided conversation, delivered on-site or online, for groups of leaders in individual schools which is designed to get the discussion started, explore your options and inform your strategic thinking. The intention is to support those in leadership roles in maintained schools to explore and understand the MAT landscape and those in Single Academy Trusts looking to join, or form, a Multi-Academy Trust.
As an experienced MAT trustee who has chaired a maintained federation and a maintained school, with a background in senior leadership, school improvement and governing board development, I promise to bring both honest pragmatism and healthy scepticism to the table, underpinned by a belief in what great school collaboration can deliver, and how being in the right trust can enable this, or how being in the wrong trust might frustrate it.
If you’re a school leader (or a senior leader in a local authority or a local area partnership) and you think that an initial discussion, without commitment, would be worthwhile, drop me a DM and let’s explore possibilities.
#SchoolsWhitePaper #Academisation #SchoolCollaboration #MATs #Schools #SchoolLeadership #MantainedSchools #Federation
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For too long, changes to the education system have been driven by political considerations, short -term difficulties and even, at times, nostalgia. Lessons From Lockdown sets out why this piecemeal approach to reform needs stop and provides an invaluable contribution to the debate that now must take place.
Rosemary Bennet
Former Education Editor, The Times
