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16 April 2026

Author: Christine Bayliss

3 tips for primary school marketing

Primary schools that proactively market their services can look forward to real dividends, suggest education consultant Christine Bayliss and marketing expert Antonia Chitty As the annual secondary school admissions round draws to a close, the primary process steps up a gear. More and more schools, maintained as well as academies, are realising that maximising intake […]

Should maintained schools convert to academies?

Question: Will all schools still have to become academies eventually? And if so, what should maintained schools be doing to review their options? Christine says: We know that the pace of conversions to academy status dropped off once Nicky Morgan did a U-turn on the target for all schools to convert by 2022. However, it […]

Our LA is quite ‘hands-off’ anyway, so what freedoms would academy conversion bring?

We don’t currently understand the freedoms that converting might give us – what additional freedoms are there? We’re pretty much left to do what we want at the moment anyway as our local authority is quite ‘hands-off’, so what will the difference be? Christine says: I’m not surprised you don’t understand the ‘freedoms’ that converting might bring, […]

If we join a MAT, will we lose our individual identity?

If we join a multi-academy trust, will we lose our individual identity? Christine says: There are those that say joining a multi-academy trust (MAT) is like getting married without the possibility of divorce for at least 125 years. Most of us wouldn’t get married if it meant subsuming our personality to another. And the same […]