From 5 July 2012, the Department is offering a new grant of £25,000 to assist primary schools that decide to convert to academy status in stronger forms of academy chains (i.e. the multi-academy trust (MAT) and umbrella trust (UT) models).

The Department has seen that strong chains of three or more academies can help drive up standards and provide opportunities for increased collaborative working among schools. Forming a strong partnership provides an opportunity for schools to review and reinvigorate their governance arrangements, to make sure they are driving improvements in standards and maximising the benefits of working together.

We want to see other primary schools realising these and the other benefits of strong primary academies chains, including:

  • the opportunity to adopt newly developed leadership models, such as the creation of an executive head role, enabling more strategic planning to drive up skills and standards across all schools in the chain;
  • a broader base from which to develop leaders;
  • the ability to pool budgets and jointly procure services to benefit the wider chain; such as hiring specialist teachers to work with all schools in the chain;
  • ability to share resources, enabling delivery of a wider and more varied curriculum; and
  • greater scope for sharing school improvement and continuing professional development (CPD) expertise and best practice to bring about improvements in practice and standards across the board.

This grant will provide the required resource with which primary schools can begin to build and formalise their partnership, enabling them to go on and achieve more quickly their shared vision of improved results, better outcomes and significantly improved standards.

For example, this grant can be used to increase the chain’s expertise or its capacity to manage the conversion into a MAT or UT by employing a part time business manager to see them through the conversion and beyond, or instructing lawyers to carry out any additional work required to form their preferred type of MAT/UT.

In order to claim the grant the schools must meet the following conditions:

  • there must be three or more primary schools intending to join the chain;
  • at least three of the group of schools applying to convert must primary schools (or special schools with primary age pupils) and the grant can only be used for the benefit of primary schools in the chain;
  • the chain must intend to use either a multi-academy trust or an umbrella trust governance model; and
  • at least one school in the chain must also meet the performing well criteria for converting schools.

The grant will be offered until 30 June 2013.

Interested schools should contact the Department via the email address on this page to discuss their options with an experienced project officer.

Contact details

Academy conversion
Email: academy.conversion@education.gsi.gov.uk