One of England’s biggest MATs is set to give up a founding school in a move that shows how important regional clusters are for national trusts.
Ormiston Academies Trust has applied to the Department for Education to transfer its only academy in Thurrock to the Unity Schools Partnership (USP) next year.
The multi-academy trust (MAT) leadership believes the deal will allow the secondary, called Ormiston Park Academy, to “benefit even more directly from [USP’s] additional local capacity and collaboration”.
The trusts have worked together informally to drive improvement.
‘Grow, grow, grow’
Education consultant Lucia Glynn believes the case highlights the shift towards MATs organising “themselves and their resources into local clusters”.
“There was a priority historically for big trusts to grow and grow and grow … but I think it’s much more strategic now.
“[It’s] more cost-effective for them to operate in a cluster model because they can have local finance, HR, estates, school improvement and shared services at a local level.”
When it launched in 2009, Ormiston took on three schools. One of these was Ormiston Park. But since then, it has remained the trust’s only Thurrock school.
Being more strategic
In 2016, Sir David Carter, the then national schools commissioner, attributed some of the troubles large trusts had in the early days of the academy movement to geography – noting some didn’t have a family of schools to cluster around.
More recently, ministers have attempted to be more strategic. Schools Week revealed in 2022 that officials were working on plans to package up “clusters” of schools eligible for government intervention to be moved en masse into large academy trusts.
Then academies minister Baroness Barran later said she would place fresh emphasis on how government sees “geographic coherence” in strong trusts.
She stressed this was not “trusts operating in a single area”, but instead trusts having clusters of schools. This was so they could “benefit from some of the collaboration that can take place between schools that are close to each other.”
Unity’s ‘additional local capacity’
In documents shared with parents, Ormiston said the school started working with Unity in February 2024, shortly before it was downgraded to ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted.
By transferring the school over, it will “join a trust with strong local presence and capacity … creating opportunities for staff to collaborate, share ideas and best practice”.
An Ormiston spokesperson said the academy has worked with Unity “to support and deliver a series of improvements at the school”.
The proposed move is “about deepening that relationship further and building on the progress made to date, enabling the academy to benefit even more directly from the additional local capacity and collaboration”.
A USP spokesperson said the academy’s “values and visions are closely aligned”, making it “a natural and logical fit to join our family of secondary, primary and special schools”.
Local Clusters, what an excellent idea. Maybe this could be done on a basis of which county they are in and then there could be resources organised at that level to help drive improvements and collaboration? Local areas could have authority to buy in resources and hold schools to account.
My thoughts exactly.