How can Multi Academy Trusts realise their potential in a rapidly changing educational landscape so that they become more than the sum of their parts and make a contribution to system leadership that transforms education as we know it?

1 + 1 = 3

It is probably true that education is going through rapid change through Academisation and the growth of Multi Academy Trusts (MATs); the temporarily weak academies get sponsored, the perceived stronger ones seek to form and grow their MATs. What happens within MATs and in particular their effectiveness at driving and sustaining academy improvement will determine the success of this educational transformation. Will the system become self-improving?

It is also probably true that there are key strategies and opportunities afforded by the scale and connection within MATs that have real potential to transform leadership, teaching, professional development, assessment, learning, outcomes and ultimately the life chances of children in our communities.

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What if.. the following provides a useful framework and description of the key approaches, mindsets and strategies that will enable MATs to add value and raise standards beyond what was possible when the individual partners in a MAT stood alone…

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In a changing educational landscape stand-alone Academies can become increasingly isolated, organisationally blind and vulnerable to dips in performance. At the same time there is increasing evidence of the significant benefits and security that comes with being part of a group of Academies within a Multi Academy Trust. The last half-decade has seen an acceleration in the establishment of new MATs as well as the rapid expansion of the pioneer MATs. Whilst this has fundamentally altered the educational landscape, most MATs are presently immature and rapidly exploring the potential benefits of deep collaboration and collegiality. Additionally, maturing MATs are beginning to exploit system leadership to secure a wider impact and are seeking MAT to MAT collaboration to secure greater provision, opportunity and outcomes for our young people.

“The new generation of campaigners must be collaborative in a way their predecessors were not, and had far less need to be.” (Hayman and Giles, 2015)

There is an urgent need to understand this new dynamic and exploit the opportunities that this evolving landscape is providing. This considers eight areas and approaches that have the potential to add significant value to Academies within a MAT and ensure MATs secure greater impact and improvement.

“System leaders focus on creating the conditions that can produce change and that can eventually cause change to be self-sustaining.” (Senge et al., 2015)

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What if.. there is a deepening of moral purpose and the motivating notion of improving the system, with other Academies; influencing and improving the educational provision for a greater number of individuals. Reinforcing this shared purpose, collective goal and deeper ambition provides the fuel for collaboration and system-focused altruism required to add greater value to the system.

The attraction of joint initiative and collaboration, carefully fostered within a MAT, exploits the useful tension between co-operation and competition. Supported through regular connection and transparent performance data, academies push and pull each other to achieve greater success against this shared purpose to uplift communities and have an impact and this generation and those that follow.

“There are many strategic benefits…from aligning joint effort, and for combining collective investment for competitive gain. Uplifting leaders know that these (collaboration and competition) are the yin and yang of enduring success.” (Hargreaves et al., 2014)

What if.. the development and use of data across a MAT provides a unique opportunity to compare and contrast performance?

Matthew Syed considers Black Box Thinking (2015) and the benefit of deeply understanding and investigating performance. Where quantitative and qualitative data across all functions of Academies within a MAT are compared there is an opportunity to identify bright spots and positively deviant behaviours that have impact (Dan and Chip Heath, 2010). Centralised, shared and transparent data trawling, scrutiny and analysis allows greater focus on what matters as well as deepening accountability. As Jim Collins (2001) states, you cannot do anything without first confronting the brutal facts of your reality. For MATs this is the basis of a self-improving system and for the identification of trails, both at MAT and individual Academy level. Black box thinking and transparency of key indicators is a key advantage of collaboration for individual Academies within MATs, particularly where they…

“…have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” (Collins, 2001)

What if.. well-connected Academies within MATs have a unique opportunity to reduce organisational blindness and to bust silos? Gillian Tett, considers the impact of working in Silos, suggesting that:

“If we become blind creatures of habit our lives are poorer as a result.” (Tett, 2015)

There is significant value gained from leaders, teachers and wider staff moving between Academies within a MAT (permanently, seconded, temporarily or for reviews) that supports improvement and is a tangible element of deep collaboration. Importantly this supports Academies to learn from, evaluate, assimilate and adopt practices that are shown to have had impact in other Academies. Where fluidity of movement is high there is increasing alignment of practices across the MAT that can reduce the need for direct standardisation or imposition of practices. As MATs mature, this movement is increasingly strategic and increasingly extends through the organisation to balance resources and intervene to accelerate improvement. In a fragmented educational landscape this connection and collaboration afforded within a MAT allows for the removal of organisational blindness and a widened view that better informs improvement.

“Collaboration occurs when people work with others … to achieve a clearly understood and mutually beneficial, shared set of goals and outcomes that they could not achieve working by themselves.” (Sanaghan and Lohndorf, 2015)

What if.. Collaboration with purpose within MATs, particularly within networks is a key element for driving improvement? Collaboration is often only effective where it achieves a clear commitment and triggers action. Whilst it is typical for Principals to meet regularly within a MAT, deeper networks have a greater impact on middle leadership, teaching and the wider work of Academies. This is supported by John Kotter who describes the need to create duel operating systems, that maintain the hierarchy, whilst maintaining, cross-organisation groups that connect and innovate.

“The real challenge is to combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to balance each other.” (Kotter, 2014)

Subject networks provide a good example, particularly where these go beyond the sharing of effective practice, which can ultimately either be adopted, or otherwise admired and left behind in the room. In a MAT scenario such networks develop a profundity that lead to staff sharing best practice and also syllabi, planning and resources, as well as having Mock Exams that are marked, moderated and followed with examiner style feedback. Adam Grant (2014) highlighted the advantages of propagating and rewarding strategic-altruism within these networks that need to support and generate a culture that rewards strategic givers and giving.

“If you share your best ideas with your competition, it will stimulate you to keep inventing new ones in order to stay on the leading edge of innovation.” (Hargreaves, 2014)

What if.. growing Leadership Capital is a key catalyst for Academy improvement and central to deriving impact within a MAT and across the system? Whilst getting the right leaders on the bus is key, either internally or externally sourced, it is also important that leaders are in the right seats, at the right time. MATs enable the strategic movement, training and development of leaders that support accelerated improvement. The ability to develop, promote and second leaders and middle leaders between Academies provides the opportunity to balance skills and experience to intervene for the good of the wider community. As Fullan (2010) describes these leaders become influential change agents within the MAT.

“The fact is, most effective leaders want to make a contribution beyond their own borders….they are humble. But they want to learn more, and they want to think that they have something to offer that will benefit others…they make perfect change agents, because they push upwards and laterally.” (Fullan, 2010)

What if.. securing a deep and unswerving focus on effective Pedagogical leadership as central to turning the key educational flywheel of Academy improvement? It is this aspect that Academies and MATs need to be the “best in the world (at)” (Collins, 2001). This is an unswerving mission and drive that has the greatest leverage on outcomes and increasing the life chances of children. This is the standing item for all cross-MAT networks and groups.

What if.. strategic system leadership needs to intervene to secure improvement? In any MAT each Academy performs differently and will be progressing on their own improvement journey. Where performance is strong a level of earned autonomy provides a level of freedom to an Academy. However, where performance dips or where an Academy underperforms there is a need to impose strategies and approaches that are shown to be effective. With high trust within a MAT there is an opportunity for executive leadership, scrutiny, review and peer challenge to disrupt and provoke improvement. The best MATs use this to seek a self-improving system that delivers discernible difference.

“(when) Schools pull together and share their best ideas, while simultaneously employing peer pressure to achieve more for the sake of all students (and the whole community).” (Hargreaves et al. 2014)

What if.. for the system to become self-improving there is a need to scrutinise, evaluate and to pursue discernible difference on the things that matter? This type of leadership seeks to execute change and tell narratives of improvement that propagate the shared moral purpose, grows bright spots and secures alignment and improvement that raises standards across the MAT.

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Maybe then.. Taken together the eight areas interact to provide a description of system leadership within a MAT; a system that seeks to be self-improving and to add more value than its constituent parts. The Educational landscape has shifted through system-wide academisation to a point where MATs are forming and growing rapidly and with few parameters. Whilst this may require some rationalisation in the future there is presently a growing movement where MATs are collaborating and taking responsibility for their wider communities; forging MAT to MAT relationships which need to grow if we are to realise the potential of system leadership and to create a self-improving and self-regulating education system.

“The role of the leader is to enable, facilitate, and cause peers to interact in a focused manner…but still only a minority of systems employ the power of collective capacity.” (Fullan, 2010)

March 2016