Join an Existing MAT or Form Your Own Trust? How to Decide

Once a governing body has decided to convert, this is the next question, and it is a bigger one than it first appears.

Joining an established trust means accepting somebody else's systems, culture and decision making in exchange for capacity that already exists. Forming your own means keeping control and building that capacity yourselves, which is harder and slower than most schools expect.

Neither is automatically right. This article sets out the trade offs honestly, what forming a trust actually involves, and how to approach the decision.

The Core Trade Off

Joining an existing trust gives you infrastructure from day one. Finance, HR, payroll, IT, estates, school improvement and governance support already exist and are already working. You pay for them through a top slice. In exchange you accept the trust's way of doing things, to a degree set out in its scheme of delegation.

Forming your own trust keeps decisions with you and with schools you have chosen to work with. You build the central capacity, which takes years and costs money, and you carry the full compliance burden from the start. You also carry the risk that comes with a small trust, which is that a single difficult year has nowhere to be absorbed.

Everything else follows from this.

When Joining an Existing Trust Usually Makes Sense

• Your school needs capacity now rather than in three years.
• You are a small school, particularly a small primary, where building central functions alone is not viable.
• Your leadership team is stretched and needs support rather than another project.
• There is a trust locally whose values and track record genuinely stand up to scrutiny.
• Your financial position would benefit from being part of a larger balance sheet.
• Your school is facing an improvement challenge and needs expertise quickly.

Our guide to choosing the right trust sets out what to examine.

When Forming Your Own Trust Usually Makes Sense

• You have a group of schools with an established, genuine working relationship, not just proximity.
• Collectively you have the scale to fund central functions, generally meaning several schools rather than two.
• You have or can recruit the executive and governance capability required.
• Your schools are strong enough that you are building on success rather than hoping structure will fix a problem.
• There is a shared educational vision that predates the conversion conversation.
• No existing trust offers what your schools actually need.

That third point is the one most often missed. A new trust needs a chief executive, a chief financial officer or equivalent, and a governance professional. Those are real appointments with real salaries, and a headteacher taking on the CEO role alongside running a school is a common arrangement that frequently does not hold.

What Forming a Trust Actually Requires

Schools consistently underestimate this, so it is worth setting out.

Legal formation. Incorporating a charitable company limited by guarantee, articles of association, members and trustees appointed, registration with the necessary bodies.

Governance design. Deciding the relationship between members, trustees and local governance, and writing a scheme of delegation that will still work when the trust has six schools rather than three. Our guide to MAT governance covers the structure.

Executive capacity. Who leads the trust, and is that genuinely separate from leading a school.

Financial function. Consolidated accounts, budget setting across schools, statutory returns, external audit, and compliance with the Academy Trust Handbook.

Human resources. The trust becomes the employer. It needs employment policies, HR capability and legal support.

Operational functions. Payroll, IT, estates, health and safety, data protection, procurement.

Assurance. Internal scrutiny arrangements, risk management and a board that can hold the executive to account.

Growth planning. If the trust intends to grow, and most do, it needs a strategy and the capacity to deliver it. Our guide to MAT growth strategy covers this.

None of this is beyond a group of capable schools. All of it takes longer than expected.

The Department's View

The department's stated direction of travel has consistently favoured schools being part of strong multi academy trusts rather than operating alone, and regional directors take a view on trust capacity and sustainability when considering applications.

In practice this means a proposal to form a new trust needs to demonstrate that it will be viable, well governed and capable of delivering improvement. A very small new trust with thin executive capacity is a harder case to make than joining an established one.

That is not a reason to abandon the idea, but it is a reason to test your proposal properly before you invest months in it. Talk to your regional director's team early. They will tell you how the proposal is likely to be received.

What About Staying as a Single Academy Trust?

It is possible, and some schools do it, particularly large secondaries with strong leadership and finances.

The difficulties are that you carry every compliance obligation alone, you have no resilience if a year goes badly, and the policy direction is against you. Many single academy trusts eventually join or form a MAT, and doing so from a position of strength is considerably easier than doing so under pressure.

From Our Experience

Many leaders tell us they chose to form their own trust because they did not want to lose control, and then discovered that the control they gained came with a workload they had not budgeted for.

We often see a group of three primaries form a trust with the headteacher of the largest becoming CEO alongside their headship. For a year it works, held together by goodwill and long evenings. Then a school needs intervention, or the CEO's own school has an inspection, or the finance officer leaves, and there is no slack anywhere.

Equally, we see schools join large trusts and feel, two years later, that they have become a number. Their head reports to a regional director they see monthly. Decisions they used to make are made centrally. Nothing has gone wrong, but something has been lost.

Neither outcome is inevitable. What predicts a good outcome, in our experience, is whether the school was honest at the outset about what it actually needed. Schools that needed capacity and joined a trust to get it are usually content. Schools that needed capacity but formed a trust to keep control are usually not.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many schools do you need to form a MAT?

There is no fixed minimum, but viability matters. Trusts of two or three small schools frequently struggle to fund the central capacity they need. Regional directors will consider sustainability.

Can we form a trust and grow later?

Yes, and most new trusts intend to. But growth requires capacity, and a trust that is fully stretched running its founding schools is not in a position to take on more. Our guide to MAT growth strategy covers readiness.

Can a headteacher also be the CEO?

It happens frequently in small trusts. It works when the trust is small and stable, and it is the first thing to break when it is not. Plan for the point at which the roles need to separate.

Is joining a trust reversible?

Leaving requires departmental agreement and is not straightforward. Treat it as a long term commitment.

Can we join a trust with schools of a different phase or type?

Yes. Many trusts are all through or mixed, and some specialise in special schools or alternative provision. Our guide to special school and PRU conversion covers specialist settings.

A Common Misconception

The misconception we meet most often is that forming your own trust means keeping things as they are.

It does not. A new trust is a new legal entity with a board that is accountable for every school in it. Individual schools become accountable to that board in ways they were not accountable to anyone before. Heads who expected autonomy sometimes find they have swapped a local authority they could largely ignore for a board of trustees who ask searching questions every six weeks.

That accountability is a good thing, properly done. But it is not the same as continuity, and governing bodies should not choose this route expecting nothing to change.

Questions for Leaders

• What capacity does our school genuinely lack, and which option supplies it faster?
• If we form a trust, who is the chief executive, and is that a real appointment?
• Have we costed the central functions a new trust needs?
• Have we tested our proposal with the regional director's team?
• If we join, have we read the scheme of delegation and understood what we give up?
• What does each option look like in year three, not year one?

Our Perspective

This decision is often framed as control versus support. That framing is not quite right.

The better question is where your school's energy should go. A school that spends the next three years building a trust is not spending those years on curriculum, teaching and the children in front of it. Sometimes that investment is worth it, because what gets built is genuinely better for pupils. Sometimes it is a substantial diversion of leadership attention with modest returns.

The strongest governing bodies we work with ask that question directly. What is the best use of our leadership capacity over the next three years. The answer to that usually settles the structural question on its own.

How Can Jarvis Education Help?

Jarvis Education supports schools and trusts through both routes.

We provide independent due diligence on trusts you are considering, feasibility and viability work for schools thinking about forming their own, governance design including schemes of delegation, financial modelling, and project management for the conversion itself.

Our consultants have led schools and trusts, inspected schools, and supported MATs through growth, merger and rebrokering, including interim trustee roles.

Explore our academy conversion and MAT growth support, or contact us to talk through the options.