Understand where you are now
Consider whether you could grow your trust, either locally or beyond. Think about whether merging with another trust would benefit your schools.
Review your operating model
Review your current operating model to make sure you have the resources and capacity needed to add a new school.
This process will help you:
- Understand what you're spending on processes, for both staff and goods and services, and evaluate how effectively these are working
- Design a central team structure that has the capacity to support a new school
Conduct a SWOT analysis
Doing a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis will help you to think self-evaluatively about:
- Where you're currently performing well
- Where you need to improve
- What opportunities adding a school presents
- What threats adding a school may pose
Download our template to make sure you get this right:
Questions to ask
Use these questions to help scaffold your thinking and SWOT analysis:
- How could you scale your model of school improvement consistently and at a high quality to welcome another group of schools?
- How can you continue to develop the leadership capacity that's necessary to support well-planned growth across the trust, and over what period of time and at what scale?
- Will your existing governance structure work well within a larger trust, or will this need to be reviewed if you add another school?
- Can you support a group of schools beyond the area you currently serve?
- Can your existing schools support, as well as benefit from, other local schools joining the trust in the same or another phase?
- Can you articulate why schools in the area should join your trust?
- How will you manage any potential concerns or opposition from stakeholders, particularly parents/carers?
Conduct thorough due diligence: download our template
Our due diligence template will help you to assess a potential new school. Across different topics it sets out:
- A series of questions to ask
- Sources to look at for evidence
- Space to make notes
Our template is based on advice from our associate education experts and the DfE's guidance on due diligence.
We recommend adapting the questions and sources of evidence depending on the context of your trust and the joining school.
Review your top-slicing strategy
Use the addition of a new school as an opportunity to consider your central financing strategy.
You'll need to assess what the incoming school's budget is and what that will add to your central fund. This applies whether you're top-slicing or GAG-pooling.
Read our guidance on the rules around top-slicing and GAG pooling.
Tips for sustainable growth
Be methodical and plan to grow steadily
Growing too fast may overstretch and overwhelm your resources. Plan for growth to make sure your systems and procedures have the capacity to grow and to avoid bottlenecks.
If you need more financial, school improvement or administrative staff, recruit people in good time.
Put resources into growth
Give key individuals dedicated time on the project, both in the planning stage and to make sure schools embed in to your trust.
Be clear on your objectives and what problems you're trying to solve
Building your trust should be about providing excellent education for more pupils.
Make sure the schools you take on are a good match
You need to ensure that adding a new school is worthwhile, with something in it for both parties (the MAT and the joining school).
If it's just to provide extra resources, then ask yourself whether this is the right reason.
Consider offering a year-long trial period before taking on a school
You can, for a price, offer resources to a school (such as expertise in management, leadership, governance or specific subject teaching) for a given period.
This can be with a view to seeing if your 2 cultures are compatible.
If the trial's successful, you can discuss a more formal move to join your trust.
Build a back office that can do the job
Don't rely on your existing administrative structure to cope when your organisation grows.
Maintained schools have their local authority as a source of support for a wide range of professional services – you'll need to build an equivalent back office that supports all schools in your trust.
Make sure admin staff are properly trained, capable and supported to fulfil their roles.