Academies Enterprise Trust rebrands as Lift Schools

One of England’s biggest academy trusts has changed the name it has held for the last 16 years.

Academies Enterprise Trust will now be called Lift Schools. The MAT said it is “a different organisation today” to the one formed in 2008.

It spent £45,000 creating the new brand, but would not provide costs for the full name change, which includes things like replacing signs outside its academies.

CEO Becks Boomer-Clark said: “For 16 years, our previous name served us well.

“But we’re a different organisation today: we’ve grown and so have our ambitions, and our name no longer represented us or what we aim to achieve.”

Lift – which has 57 schools – aims for 90 per cent of pupils to achieve expected standards in phonics, SATS, reading ability and GCSEs by 2028.

It’s not the first large trust to have a major rebrand.

Reach4 was renamed Astrea seven years ago. The MAT was a spin-off of the country’s largest primary-only MAT Reach2 – but the move cut off any remaining ties to its founders.

Delta Academies Trust underwent a similar rebrand shortly after chief executive Paul Tarn took over the reins in 2016.

This came after the chain, previously called School Partnership Trust Academies, received criticism for low standards. AET also faced criticism more than a decade ago for growing too quickly and was placed on the government’s paused list for a few years.

The Park View Education Trust, which ran schools involved in the “Trojan Horse” investigation in Birmingham, also changed its name to the Core Education Trust in 2015.