Our thanks to our associate education experts Brendan Hollyer and Graeme Hornsby for their help with this article.
Financial savings Your school may benefit from financial stability and efficiencies as MATs can: Centralise services and functions, which helps to reduce costs and can enable trusts to have effective oversight and control of finances and promote a "value for money culture" Generate additional income from commercial activities across the MAT Vary the proportion of funding they retain (known as 'top-slicing') to reflect the different circumstances of individual schools The Department for Education (DfE) published good practice guidance for multi-academy trusts in 2016. Though the guidance is now withdrawn, pages 45 to 48 of the archived version explain how schools might see savings or efficiencies in areas like: Per pupil spending - a survey at the time found that on average, MATs may have helped primary schools save £145 per pupil (page 45) Financial planning and forecasting Staff deployment/workforce structures Procurement Get up