Leadership

What Are The Greatest Challenges Facing MATs?

What’s on the minds of MAT leaders as they deal with a cocktail of major challenges? Strictly Education’s Barry Smith shares insights from a recent round table.
Two female teachers, one younger and one older, sit smiling at a table while they use a computer.

Leaders and staff at multi-academy trusts are facing a great deal of pressure. Tightening budgets, recruitment and retention, people management and development and pupil attendance are just some of the issues they face, according to our second annual MAT Leaders Survey (see panel for key findings), carried out during the summer.

With those findings in hand, we gathered a panel of highly experienced and respected MAT leaders for a round table to dig deeper into these and other issues. Their insights were fascinating.

Funding challenges

As our survey showed that balancing the budget was a top priority for leaders, it was unsurprising that the topic was front-of-mind for our panel members.

Canon Peter Bruinvels, Governor at Priory Church of England Secondary School, Dorking, predicted an increasingly challenging time for the education financial landscape in coming years. 'We have the cost of living and pupil numbers may not always grow,' he said. 'There's also going to be a demand, I think, from the private education sector with a lot of parents no longer able to afford to keep their children in those schools, so they'll be coming across to the state sector.'

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