An introduction

When forming a Multi-Academy trust or converting to an Academy we know it is essential that the following questions receive detailed consideration:

• Visioning and Planning

  • How will our vision and ethos impact on our role as an employer?
  • What type of employer do we want to be?  If the answer is an ‘employer of choice’ what does that mean in reality?
  • What will be our approach to issues such as probationary periods, standard or non-standard contracts, pay and rewards?

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• HR Auditing

  • Is our current policy framework legally compliant?
  • Do we have absolute confidence in safeguarding and safer recruitment processes?
  • Across the MAT are people with the same job titles doing the same work for the same pay? If not, what do we need to do?

• Staffing Structures

  • Are current staffing structures appropriate for an academy or MAT context?
  • Do we need to consider the appointment of a CEO, Finance Director, HR Manager to manage matters at Trust level?
  • How will Trust wide challenges be resolved and how will important decisions be signed off?

• Roles and Responsibilities

  • Do current job descriptions need to be updated, reviewed or revised in light of changing accountabilities?
  • How will performance management be managed in the context of a Multi-Academy Trust?
  • What will governance look like in the schools across the MAT?
  • Will some staff responsibilities need to change significantly and if so how do we manage this?

• Reviewing Terms and Conditions

  • Do we want to use amended staff terms and conditions to introduce a rewards package for outstanding performance?
  • Will we need to harmonise staff terms and conditions to ensure compliance with the equalities legislation?

• TUPE

  • Do we understand the TUPE process?
  • Have we made provision to be supported by an organisation with TUPE experience?
  • Are there any potential complications with the TUPE process because of our particular circumstances?

• Policy Harmonisation

  • Are our policies up-to-date and legally compliant?
  • Do the policies in use in individual schools vary? If so what are the implications of this?
  • Will we need additional policies to reflect academy status?

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Joining a Multi-Academy Trust? Things to Consider Part 1

Our current engagement with clients tells us that the issue of conversion to academy status and forming or joining a suitable MAT is a very hot topic for many school governing bodies at the present time. We will be publishing a number of informative articles in the coming weeks on this topic.

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Joining a MAT? Things to Consider Part 2 – TUPE

So you have made the commitment with a group of like-minded schools to form a MAT.

There are many things to think about:

• applying to the Secretary of State for an Academy Order;
• consideration of the make-up of the Trust; and
• managing the actual process of conversion.

There is a long list of things to do in a very short space of time and so the tendency is to concentrate on the critical tasks for transfer that are outlined in your project plan.

In our experience we find that schools with aggressive timescales to conversion don’t always give full attention to the change management aspects.

This is a big change to the way in which you will work and operate the school and an even bigger change in the way you will collaborate with other schools in the MAT.  The way in which the relation between the schools will manifest itself is far too important to be left to evolve naturally, it needs detailed consideration and will impact on the whole strategic approach of the MAT.

We find that the initial stages of communication and consultation with staff that then lead on to Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE) is an ideal time for Trustees of the MAT to start thinking of the way in which their responsibilities as the employer will be delivered and how the new ways of working can be raised and discussed with staff.  Trustees should consider carefully whether contracts and terms and conditions within the MAT will deliver the vision they have for their schools and will support the important partnership of schools across the MAT.

The transfer of staff is a defined procedure that isn’t always used to manage the change appropriately.  In all cases there is a statutory obligation on the current employer to inform employee representatives (i.e. the recognised union or if there isn’t one, elected representatives) of certain matters in writing.  These are:

• the fact that the transfer is to take place;
• the date of the transfer and the reasons for it; and
• the legal, economic and social implications of the transfer for any affected employees and the measures (changes) which the employer envisages it will, in connection with the transfer, take in relation to any affected employees or, tell them if it envisages that no measures will be taken.

There is no longer a statutory obligation to run a full consultation unless there are proposed measures (changes) to employees’ terms and conditions.  The regulations do not define the term “measures” but they are likely to include changes to existing work practices such as pay rates, job descriptions, hours of work, recognition and collective bargaining.

If you are transferring into an existing MAT you should expect some support from the MAT with the TUPE process and representatives of the MAT should be prepared to visit the school and address staff at a meeting.  If you are a Local Authority (LA) school presently it is really the responsibility of the LA as transferring employer to organise the consultation with staff and unions.  However, many LAs no longer have the capacity or, find it difficult to meet the timescales set by the DfE for conversion.  Be careful if it falls to the MAT representatives to send out letters or invitations to the staff on behalf of the existing employer.

If the MAT you are joining has been in existence for some time their experience of TUPE may no longer be current.  In January 2014, changes to Collective Redundancies and Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (Amendment) Regulations 2014 gave more freedoms to change things.  Examples of these new freedoms include:

• enabling changes to terms and conditions of employment post transfer where there is an Economic, Technical or Operational (ETO) reason for the change and the employee agrees;
• removing automatic unfairness from dismissals (whether before or after the transfer) which occur as a result of an ETO reason entailing changes in the workforce;
• enabling changes to terms and conditions where the variation is allowed for in the employee’s contract;
• enabling changes to terms and conditions derived from collective agreements to take effect one year after the transfer, provided that, in overall terms, the amended contract is no less favourable to the employee;
• establishing a static approach to the way in which collective agreements incorporated into the contract of employment operate post transfer by providing that changes to the collective agreement are not automatically incorporated into the transferred employee’s contract unless the transferee is a party to the collective bargaining machinery; and
• allowing for the transferee to begin collective redundancy consultation under s 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 before the transfer takes place.

We would always advise getting some expert help from an HR adviser during TUPE but as a minimum your TUPE process should include the following steps.

• Confirming the intention to TUPE and identifying any measures.
• A consultation and engagement process.
• One to one meetings with the most affected staff.
• A due diligence process on employee data and on-going HR casework.
• ETO- Legislation does however allow possible variations of contracts for:
  • Economic reasons – e.g. lower funding due to a falling roll;
  • Technical reasons – e.g. streamlining technical processes; and
  • Organisational reasons – e.g. change in curriculum requirements.
• Identifying what a measure is.
• Pension transfer for LGPS and TPS.
• Letters to staff from current / new employer to confirm TUPE change of employer.

In the next briefing note (Part 3) we’ll consider how the MAT might use this stage to start an effective process of change management.

Joining a MAT Part 3 – Managing Change

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Taking the school into a MAT, either from a stand-alone Academy or as a group of schools collaborating to form a new MAT, will bring about significant changes in the way you work. The drivers for joining the MAT in the first place will largely determine the type of change that your staff experience.  Is it improvement driven i.e. does your school need to change rapidly to meet DfE or OfSTED expectations or is it resources driven i.e. your school can’t find the type of support it wants locally?

The key decision makers, senior leaders and governors, need to think through what are the key changes that the transfer to a MAT will bring about.  Obvious areas may be changes to policy that will affect the way staff operate.  This may involve contractual issues, such as the way performance management is handled, or operational matters to do with the way that safeguarding or child protection is handled within the context of a MAT.

If there are several like-minded schools proposing to join the MAT it is easy to assume that each school will somehow absorb any changes.  However, from our experience switching to centralised services within the MAT or changing the operational procedures across the schools doesn’t by itself guarantee change.

Where MATs have grown quite quickly there often isn’t sufficient centralised resource.  When questions the individual schools have can’t be answered quickly or accurately, then staff will instinctively revert to doing things in the way they have always done because they feel under time pressure or the old ways are perceived as safe.  The problems that then emerge are associated with inconsistent application of policy, unequal treatment of individuals and use of non-compliant procedures.

One area where primary schools particularly will find more time and effort is required is payroll.  Whether you remain with a Local Authority service or move to a commercial provider the relationship between the Trust and employees has changed and the provider will not accept the risk of potentially authorising payments without a robust approval system.  The EFA will also expect the Trust to have full awareness of its responsibilities in this area.  This often means that the staff responsible for the payroll administration and management of the monthly approval process will need support and training to make sure the process runs smoothly across all schools.

Change is not a one off event and the staff who will need to manage things differently will need support in changing attitudes and sometimes values.  Change can be threatening to some people and destabilising to others and your change plan needs to reflect this understanding.  The tendency for some staff and governors is to regard the conversion or transfer to a MAT to be little more than a checklist.

Change of any description is a two way process.  The way forward on changes to some policy decisions may involve feedback from staff or their representatives.  One area where this is critical is on deliberations around the pay policy for the MAT or, linked to that, performance management.  A lack of adequate change management in this area can be very demotivating for staff when the purpose should be just the opposite.

This is an area that often needs careful consideration.  When several schools join a MAT it quickly becomes apparent that what happens in one school is not always what happens in another.  Even people who hold the same job title may not have the same responsibilities.  We discuss this further in our next paper but, for the time being, let us just raise the point that in order to fulfil their obligations to employees and act equally and fairly Trustees will have to consider how these differences are harmonised.

Commitment and collegiality has to be developed.  If the MAT is to maximise the benefits the schools will have by being a member, then the culture of the organisation will have to be adopted in all of the constituent parts.

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Joining a MAT Part 4 – The Evolution of the School Business Manager

Defining the School Business Manager role in a Multi Academy Trust (MAT)

Local Authority (LA) schools converting to academy status within a MAT will have very experienced administrators who may well be asked to step-up to the role of Academy Business Manager. Many may already have the title of School Business Manager but it would be wrong to assume that the two roles are the same and that an individual can simply transition from one to the other. True, there will be many aspects of the job that have common features but there are considerable new responsibilities that administrators need to cover post conversion.

In community schools many aspects of the administrative function may previously have been shared with a local authority service provider. For example, certain finance functions may have been undertaken by a bursar from the LA’s financial services team, contracts may have been issued centrally by the LA’s HR team and Health and Safety (H&S) inspections may have been undertaken by a LA H&S inspector with little input from school staff. We have even come across situations where the school’s Single Central Record was administered by the Local Authority.

It is our experience that the job descriptions (and the salaries) of existing School Business Managers vary considerably from one Local Authority area to another. The title School Business Manager gives no real indication of what someone does on a day to day basis or what they are paid.

Therefore, we have set out below a list of responsibilities that are most likely to be added to the role post conversion whilst acknowledging that in some cases School Business Managers may have to absorb other duties previously undertaken by the Local Authority.

Finance

• Introducing and managing a new financial system across the Trust.
• Preparing the budget.
• Reporting to the EFA.
• Monthly consolidation and reporting to Local Governing Body and Trust.
• Twice yearly meetings with auditors.
• Monitoring of budget against agreed financial targets and preparation of management accounts.
• Ensuring compliance with the Funding Agreement and the Academies Financial Handbook.
• Working closely with colleagues across the Trust to ensure continuity of approach.
• Liaison with payroll and monthly approval of payroll reports prior to payment.
• Understanding the additional and differing demands of working in a company limited by guarantee.

HR

• Maintaining the Single Central Record.
• Undertaking identity and right to work checks and maintaining records.
• DBS and other pre-employment checks as required.
• Preparing staff contracts.
• Maintenance of staff records or managing the HR information system.
• Organising safer recruitment training for governors and staff.
• Monitoring staff absences.
• Regular review of policies and procedures on a cycle agreed by the Trust.

Leadership

• Joining the Senior Leadership Team
• Managing pupil admissions and possibly the whole admissions process.
• Closer working with the Local Governing Body e.g. attendance at Finance Sub-Committee.
• Increased line management responsibilities e.g. managing the premises officer.
• Increased responsibility for the procurement of goods and services e.g. building insurance.
• Risk Management Assessments e.g. organising Health and Safety Inspections.
• Overarching responsibility to ensure Value for Money.
• Disaster planning and business continuity.

It is our experience that the additional responsibilities placed on School Business Managers are often usefully looked at in a ‘Visioning Exercise’ before any significant decisions are made. Such an exercise will need to consider harmonisation of roles within the MAT, including the role and responsibilities of the Academy Business Managers, alongside any other senior roles such as a Chief Executive Officer or Finance Director.  Obviously, this will require the involvement of the existing School Business Managers in strategy meetings that follow on from the original visioning exercise.

The starting point for a successful outcome is to audit what each of the business managers currently do and match this against the new responsibilities that we have described above. Once a common job description has been determined it will then be necessary to consider if any anomalies exist in current terms and conditions across the schools.

The above assumes that within the MAT there will be a Business Manager in each academy. An equally legitimate conclusion arising out of the strategy meetings could be to appoint a Business Director to work across the MAT with administrators based in each school. Many MATs have taken this approach and often call this post Finance Director.  However, our view is that this title distorts the role by placing too much emphasis on the finance function at the cost of the equally important responsibilities for HR, Health and Safety, Premises, etc.

At the end of the day each MAT will decide on its own way forward. What is important is that any decisions arrived at are driven by a strategy rather than a set of assumptions.

Joining a MAT part 5 – Senior Roles in the Trust.

This article is part of a series and follows on from “Joining a MAT part 4 – the Evolution of the School Business Manager” which looks at how the  School Business Manager roles and responsibilities within a multi academy trust are affected.

Unless you are considering joining an existing Multi-Academy Trust (MAT), when schools come together to create a MAT it is essential that there is an early conversation about what senior roles are needed in order to run the Trust. There may well be several existing Headteachers or a combination of Executive Headteachers, Headteachers and Heads of School.  The conversation will inevitably turn to the question of whether a Chief Executive post will be required going forward.

Our experience shows that it is often taken as a given that a Chief Executive is required.  Indeed we have come across embryonic MATs where a Chief Executive post has been included in the new staffing structure even before there has been a discussion about:

• the cost implications of creating the post;
• the role and its responsibilities and accountabilities; and
• how the role will interface with the leaders of the individual schools.

The Chief Executive Officer role is a fairly recent development and probably arises from the view of a MAT as a multi-million pound business.  It is very true that for larger MATs, or those with significant centralised services, a role that looks after the service contracts, procurement and operational requirements is a necessity.  Whether this is through a Chief Executive Officer, a Chief Operating Officer or Finance Director is a matter of choice for the MAT and will be based on an assessment of local need at the time.

In smaller MATs it is not always a foregone conclusion that a CEO post is essential.  We have come across a number of small MATs where the division of responsibility for driving:

• outstanding outcomes for children; and
• organisational efficiency

have been shared between an Executive Headteacher and a Chief Operating Officer without the necessity for an additional layer of leadership.  There are also MATs where the headteachers run the individual academies to an agreed set of principles and standards and report to an executive board created by the Trust.

The simple message for those thinking of forming or enlarging a MAT is that structures that work well for two or three primary academies (or two or three secondary academies) may not be as effective in a much larger grouping of schools involving perhaps 20 schools.  Likewise what will work in an exclusively primary or secondary grouping will almost certainly not work in a larger group that includes primary, secondary, Special and Alternative Provision academies.

If your strategy is to expand the MAT, a successful structure that has worked for a like-minded group of 2 – 3 successful academies may not be appropriate, or may at least require significant amendment, if your plans for expansion include bringing into the MAT 5 or 6 additional academies, some of whom may be currently in need of significant additional support.

There is also a current tendency in many newly forming MATs to identify an Executive Headteacher as the Chief Executive.  In such cases the Trust will need to consider very carefully a job description and a supporting contract that identifies responsibility for specific targets or outcomes across all of the academies.

For those of you who are more familiar with a traditional Local Authority environment you may not be fully up-to-date with the concept of an Executive Headteacher.  As a starting point, remember that in law there needs to be a clearly defined role that acts as the substantive Headteacher of the school.  The recent emergence of the concept of an Executive Head means that this role is by no means as clearly defined and there are various different models in operation around the country.  An Executive Headteacher may be:

• the substantive head of one academy with a mentoring or school improvement brief in others;
• the substantive head of two or more academies in the MAT whilst other individual academies that are making good progress have their own substantive headteacher; or
• the substantive Headteacher of all the schools in the group with a Head of School in each of the individual settings who takes operational responsibility for the site on a day to day basis.

The increase in Executive Headteachers has come about as a response to:

• difficulties recruiting headteachers in certain areas of the country or in certain sectors;
• the need to build management capacity in underperforming schools; and
• the development of distributed or system leadership models.

Where this model has been adopted the Executive Headteacher has invariably developed a more strategic approach to their role and a Head of School (or similarly titled person) has taken more of the operational or day-to-day leadership responsibility.  The local context and current OfSTED assessment of the schools joining the MAT will determine what the primary focus of the Executive Headteacher’s role will be.  For example, the primary focus of the role may be:

• schools that need rapid improvement;
• ensuring that the vision, ethos and values of the Trust are embedded in all the academies; or
• addressing difficulties with recruitment.

In medium sized MATs the Chief Executive Role is often combined with that of one of the Executive Headteachers.  In the planning stages the Trustees should consider very carefully whether this structure is the one that will deliver their vision and the common needs of the schools.  The exact roles of the senior officers in the group will depend very much on the immediate needs of your academies at the time you set up the Multi-Academy Trust but these may change over time.  Questions such as:

• Is there a growth plan?
• Does the MAT expect to be welcoming more schools in the near future?
• Will the leadership structure be appropriate with more schools in the MAT?

should all be addressed.

It is also not an easy task to find someone with the breadth of skills to:

• keep a firm hand on the teaching and learning outcomes in existing academies;
• take a lead in turning around a number of underperforming schools;
• manage several conversions to academy status; and
• run a multi-million pound business with possibly several hundred staff.

In our experience many MATs have had to change their leadership structure and team very quickly after start up as they quickly realise adding more schools doesn’t just mean doing more of the same.

If the MAT has considered its direction and vision early on in the planning it doesn’t necessarily mean that changes won’t still be needed but at least they’ll be expected and planned for.  A forward looking Trust will consider its vision and strategy at an early stage and regularly revisit it.  Many small MATs that have been in existence for three or more years are also now revisiting the vision as circumstances have led them to review their future.  Factors driving this decision include: the growth of MATs generally; the future of stand-alone academies; interesting changes in the market place for support services; and decline of services offered by Local Authorities.

We’ve talked a lot about roles and responsibilities within a multi academy trust but that leads us to consider where the job descriptions fit in the order of things. As you change and grow consider what jobs are needed. What do you need the people in those roles to do?

There is no clear framework for an Executive Head acting as a CEO and also no clear framework for salary. The Trust will want value for money and effectiveness in the senior roles so plan the job descriptions to ensure roles don’t overlap and there are clear lines of accountability.  If there is duplication of roles within the MAT consider how you will deal with this at an early stage.

Carry out robust due diligence on the schools joining the MAT, not just data on employees but understanding the culture and operation of those schools and where it might be at odds with Trust policy and procedures.  Every school has probably operated as a semi-autonomous unit before joining the MAT and you are now bringing some element of standardisation and harmonisation across the group.  It may be a balancing act worthy of Blondin’s trip across Niagara Falls.

There are also implications for TUPE.  If the Head, Executive Head or Associate Head moves into a new role in the MAT you will need to offer new job descriptions and possibly contracts (we’ll consider contracts in part 6).  If there is a reduction in the number of roles as well e.g. only one Executive Head is required where we have had three in the joining schools beforehand then a recruitment exercise may be required.

There are a lot of issues around staffing and structures that many MATs only realise after the event but with careful planning and taking advice in the early stages some of these can be foreseen and overcome effectively.

Joining a MAT part 6 – Things I Wish I Had Known

Over the past few years we have worked with various school groupings on the formation and development of Multi-Academy Trusts.  In many cases our relationship with the headteachers and governors has continued long after the establishment of the MAT as we have continued to supply other HR support services.  Working with colleagues in a developing MAT has given us many opportunities to reflect back on the conversion process and consider lessons learned.  The following comments have been taken from various conversations with headteachers, school business managers and governors about the conversion process and working in a MAT.