A new report from the Education Policy Institute brings together findings from their interactive benchmarking tool, which compares the performance of individual academy trusts, local authorities, federations and dioceses across four key performance indicators, along with results from their Decisions in Education in England (DEEP) survey of senior leaders working in school groups.
Key findings include:
- Amongst secondary schools, multi-academy trusts have, on average, significantly higher annual turnover of classroom teachers than local authorities (16.9% in the median MAT, 14.4% in the median LA), and annual turnover is even higher in larger MATs (19.5% on average).
- At primary, multi-academy trusts are around twice as likely to have positive in-year balances compared to other group types. At secondary, MATs are almost three times as likely to have positive in-year balances than other school groups (though on average, they represent a smaller percentage of overall budgets than in primary).
- Larger MATs (with 10 or more schools in a phase) have, on average, higher rates of persistent absence, suspension, and unexplained exits than smaller MATs and local authorities. However, these larger MATs admit greater rates of disadvantaged pupils and have higher attainment outcomes for low prior attaining and disadvantaged pupils.
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