Academy Conversion & MAT Growth Support

Conversion is often described as a legal process. In practice it is four processes running at the same time, and the difficulty lies in keeping them in step.

The regulatory process. Registering interest, submitting the application, securing an academy order from the Regional Director, and working with the DfE regions group office and your assigned project lead through to the funding agreement.

The legal process. The Commercial Transfer Agreement, the land transfer or lease, the articles of association, and any existing contracts, leases, licences, or PFI arrangements sitting on your site.

The people process. TUPE consultation, staff communication, pension arrangements under the Local Government Pension Scheme and the Teachers’ Pension Scheme, and the actuarial work that goes with them.

The operational process. Payroll, finance systems, insurance or the Risk Protection Arrangement, HR, IT, catering, banking, VAT registration, policies, GIAS records, and the practical business of becoming a legal entity with its own accounts.

We often see schools handle the first two well, because those come with letters and deadlines that demand attention. It is the operational strand that catches people out, because nobody sends a reminder about it. It simply has to be ready on day one.

For a single school joining an established multi-academy trust, six to nine months from application to opening is a realistic expectation. For a group of schools forming a brand new trust, nine to fifteen months is more common.

Timescales stretch when land is complicated, when a diocese is involved, when there is a PFI contract on the site, or when a school is carrying a deficit that has to be resolved before transfer.

Most schools aim for a 1 September or 1 January opening, because a mid-year transfer creates extra work for finance teams. Working back from that date is usually the first practical thing we do with a client.

This is a far more important question than it used to be, because the funding has gone.

The £25,000 academy conversion support grant closed to new voluntary applications from 1 January 2025, and no replacement scheme has been announced. The Trust Capacity Fund, which supported trust growth, ended alongside it. Schools converting voluntarily now meet the costs themselves, usually from reserves.

Costs to plan for include local authority conversion charges, which vary considerably by authority and can run to several thousand pounds, legal fees, actuarial reports for pension liabilities, any premises or survey work required, and project management support.

We are straightforward with schools about this. Conversion is now a genuine investment decision, and it deserves to be treated as one. If the case only works with a grant that no longer exists, that is worth knowing before you start rather than halfway through.

Growth is not simply a matter of adding schools. Trusts that grow well tend to be deliberate about why they are growing, how far they can reach, and what their central team can genuinely absorb.

We support trusts with growth strategy and geographic planning, readiness assessments before approaching the DfE, due diligence on prospective schools, integration planning, central team capacity modelling, and the practical onboarding of a new school through its first year.

Many trust leaders tell us the same thing after a difficult addition. The problem was rarely the school itself. It was that the trust took it on faster than its central services could support it.

Not every structural change is a conversion. Trusts merge. Schools move from one trust to another. Occasionally a trust decides, responsibly, that it is no longer the right home for a school.

These processes carry the same legal and operational workload as conversion, with additional sensitivity. Staff have often already been through one transfer. Parents may be unsettled. Reputation matters on both sides.

We support trusts through merger feasibility and negotiation, transfers of schools between trusts, rebrokering arrangements, and the communication planning that keeps families informed and confident throughout. Our starting point is always the same. What will this change mean for the children in the school, and how do we protect their experience while the adults sort out the structures?

The landscape has shifted, and leaders are right to be asking what it means for them.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026. From 29 June 2026, the Secretary of State’s duty to issue an academy order to maintained schools in a category of concern was removed and replaced with a discretionary power. Structural intervention is still expected to be the likely route for the most serious cases, while Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence teams take a larger role in supporting schools from September 2026.

The Act also brings academies and maintained schools closer together in other ways. From September 2026, academies are required to teach the National Curriculum and to follow national teacher pay and conditions, and local authorities gain the power to direct academies to admit particular children. The Act additionally creates the framework for accountability at trust level, rather than only at the level of individual schools.

What does this mean in practice? Two things, in our view.

First, conversion is now more clearly a choice than an inevitability for most schools, which makes the quality of the decision more important. A board that converts because it believes in a particular trust and a particular partnership is in a far stronger position than one that converted because it felt the direction of travel was fixed.

Second, trusts need to be able to evidence their own effectiveness as trusts, not simply point to the performance of individual schools. Growth plans and central team capacity now sit squarely within that picture.

This is a developing area and further guidance is still expected. We keep track of it, so the advice you receive reflects where things actually stand.

Yes. Voluntary conversion remains available, and maintained schools can still apply to join an existing trust or form a new one with others. What has changed is the funding and the policy emphasis, not the route itself.

No. The academy conversion support grant closed to new voluntary applications from 1 January 2025, and no replacement has been announced. Schools converting voluntarily now fund the process themselves, which makes early, realistic budgeting far more important than it used to be.

Not automatically. From 29 June 2026 the duty to issue an academy order to schools in a category of concern was removed, and the Secretary of State now has a discretionary power instead. Structural intervention is still expected to be the likely outcome in the most serious cases, so a school in this position should take advice early rather than assume either way.

It depends on what you are trying to achieve. Joining an established trust brings immediate central capacity, systems, and support, but less autonomy. Forming a new trust with partner schools gives you more control over the culture and the model, but you build the central capacity yourself and it takes longer. We help boards think this through properly, rather than reaching for the obvious answer.

Staff transfer to the academy trust under TUPE, on their existing terms and conditions, with continuity of service. Proper consultation is a legal requirement and, just as importantly, it is how you keep the trust of the people who will still be teaching your pupils in September.

Teaching staff continue in the Teachers’ Pension Scheme. Support staff remain in the Local Government Pension Scheme, and the trust becomes a participating employer. An actuarial report is normally required, and the cost of that report should be in your budget from the start.

Land is usually transferred by a long lease at a peppercorn rent, though arrangements differ where land is held by a diocese, a trust body, or under a PFI contract. Land is the single most common cause of delay in conversion, which is why we start it early rather than leaving it to the legal stage.

Broadly the same process applies, but the diocese is a key partner throughout and will have its own requirements, its own preferred trust arrangements, and its own view on land. Building the diocese into the timetable from the beginning avoids a great deal of difficulty later.

It is possible, but it is not straightforward and it cannot be done unilaterally. It requires agreement between the trusts involved and the Department for Education, and the process is treated as a transfer rather than a departure. Early, honest conversations usually produce better outcomes than formal ones.

There is no correct number. What matters is whether the central team can genuinely support the schools it has, and whether growth is planned rather than opportunistic. We would rather help a trust grow carefully to eight strong schools than quickly to fifteen stretched ones.