91����

“There’s an assumption that because the South West is an attractive holiday destination, there aren’t any issues,” says Matthew Shanks.

The trust leader of Education South West (14 academies in Devon and Cornwall) echoes a sentiment voiced by many South West multi-academy chief executives - that preconceptions of the region risk concealing deep issues affecting many schools and young people.

Shanks tells 91���� that the region has both a high level of affluence and a high level of disadvantage, presenting a challenge that leaders across its seven counties are trying to tackle.

Given that the South West is the most academised region in the country, this is a battle being fought by both local authorities and trusts. Trusts have adopted more than half of the schools in the region.

Indeed, the challenges for schools in the South West - including low social mobility, poor transport links and funding difficulties - have not prevented wide academisation.

But what shape is the academy system in to meet these challenges? And, while trusts’ position in the region is apparently cemented, what does the future look like for MATs?

The most academised region in England

There were 2,593 open state schools in the South West in the 2023-24 academic year, according to the latest , released in November.

Fifty-eight per cent of these schools are academies, which makes the South West the most academised out of the nine DfE regions.

Some 88 per cent of its secondaries are academies - a proportion higher than the national average of 80 per cent.

��

Primary schools in the region are also more likely than average to be academised: only 40 per cent are local authority-maintained, compared with 57 per cent across England.

As well as having 761 maintained primaries, as of June, the South West has 18 nursery schools, 38 secondaries, 41 special schools and 15 pupil referral units run by local authorities.

Just one area in the region still has more maintained schools than academies: Gloucestershire has 158 maintained schools compared with 130 academies.

The biggest multi-academy trust players in the region include the Bath and Wells Academies Trust (45 schools), Cabot Learning Federation (34 schools) and The White Horse Federation (30 schools), all of which have most of their schools in the South West.

The need for social mobility

Referring to the levels of disadvantage in the region, Shanks says: “I don’t think it’s a surprise that the country’s first social mobility tsar was appointed in the South West.”

Lee Elliot Major became professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter in 2019 after leading education charity The Sutton Trust.

He agrees with Shanks that the region’s inequalities are “often overlooked because the South West is seen as a beautiful part of the world” - and says the country’s “national politicians” are guilty of this oversight.

However, Elliot Major warns that there are “profound inequalities”.

The South West had the lowest educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils out of all the English regions, a by Elliot Major and Dr Anne-Marie Sim revealed in 2022.

Just 17 per cent of its disadvantaged students went on to university in 2018-19 - the lowest rate of all the regions.

In an effort to tackle this problem, the South West Social Mobility Commission, led by Elliot Major, published an “equity scorecard” this year to assess how well schools are serving disadvantaged pupils.

But why is social mobility such a persistent issue in region?

Moira Marder, chief executive of Ted Wragg Multi-Academy Trust (17 schools), believes it comes down to a lack of tangible opportunities.

“I could see the skyscrapers of the city being built outside my classroom window - children in the South West don’t see that opportunity,” says Marder, who grew up in London’s East End.

Simon Hague, who runs Crofty Education Trust in Cornwall (16 schools), warns about the impact of poverty, along with dwindling industry and a lack of government investment.

“Even in deprived areas of Liverpool [where he previously worked], there was still aspiration,” Hague says.

“Whereas in Cornwall, there is a different level of poverty. It was quite shocking to me when I first saw it. Local industry closures and a lack of government investment have created a lack of hope.”

Gemma Piper, chief executive of Swindon-based The Park Academies Trust (eight schools), says that the “very strong feeling I get from being in the South West is the importance of place”.

Piper, who previously worked in the South East, says it is “absolutely imperative” for South West trust leaders to understand the communities they serve - particularly in Swindon, where, like Cornwall, industries that previously dominated the area have mostly died out.

Rural school funding pressures

In addition to this, funding challenges are widespread.

Although the struggle for adequate school funding is a national issue, the rural nature of much of the South West has a disproportionate effect.

Almost a quarter of the members of F40, a school funding campaign group made up of 42 local authorities that are among the lowest funded for education in England, are areas in the South West, including Devon, Somerset and Swindon.

Marder says that in Devon funding issues are “acute” and a “real challenge”.

“We’re so far below the national funding formula and we are dealing with that alongside a local authority that’s got such a high-needs budget deficit,” she says.

Shanks believes that the lack of public transport in the area must be considered when looking at the region’s inequalities.

“If you look at a map and see how close two schools are to one another, in reality it could take an hour and a half for you to get to them,” he explains, adding that this would take significantly less time in more developed regions with better transport links.

The power of collaboration

Despite the challenges that schools in the region are facing, there is a clear spirit of collaboration across the South West that perhaps sets its aside from other regions.

“I don’t find competitive trust leaders when I’m talking to them in the South West,” Mark Blackman, an education consultant working primarily in the South West, tells 91����.

“Uniquely, we don’t have the big national players with a big footprint in the region. Instead, we have more homegrown MATs.”

��

While large national trusts like United Learning and E-ACT operate in the region, the South West is primarily composed of trusts created in the region or across its borders.

This has been beneficial in maturing relationships “quite considerably”, says Steve Taylor, chief executive of Cabot Learning Federation.

“There are enough of us who have been around long enough to not be in the throws of that competitive space,” explains Taylor, who runs the 34-academy trust.

However, the lack of competitiveness in the South West could also be down to the fact that there are simply fewer schools in each planning area, according to a former member of the local regional director’s team, who asked to remain anonymous.

“If you speak to trust leaders in other regions, they say, ‘Those CEOs in that city don’t talk to each other and they are often trying to recruit staff from one another.’ You don’t really get that in the South West,” they say.

In terms of bringing momentum to the academies movement in the region, many MAT leaders give credit to Sir David Carter, who was the South West’s first regional schools commissioner.

Referring to his time in this role in 2014-15, Carter says the regional office made an effort to speed up academisation, which was then a big part of Conservative government policy.

“We worked really hard in those first two years to create a system through which those kind of processes could work really quickly,” he says.

This included approving schools’ requests to join trusts promptly, and also approaching conversations from a “school improvement perspective, not just about necessarily growing the number of academies”.

Carter, who later became national schools commissioner, recognised the “reasonably well-embedded collaborative feelings in the system” early on - and agrees that they are still present in the region today.

“There were a number of people who knew each other, worked together, trained together. And so it meant that a lot of those embryonic partnerships were already there,” he explains.

More from MAT Tracker:

• West Midlands regional deep dive
• North East regional deep dive
• The latest reported regional board decisions

Many trust leaders also attribute the region’s less competitive nature to the strong sense of collaboration encouraged by the South West’s current regional director, Lucy Livings, and her predecessor, Hannah Woodhouse.

They are part of a strong line of female South West regional directors, including Rebecca Boomer-Clark, now CEO of Lift Schools (formerly Academies Enterprise Trust).

Woodhouse, who was the South West regional director for seven years, was widely seen to be leading practice across the country.

Under Woodhouse’s leadership, the regional director’s office helped to create the trust assurance framework and set up the small schools group.

“Both Hannah and Lucy have been good relationship-builders,” Taylor says, echoing positive comments made by many leaders.

However, one chief executive, who wishes to remain anonymous, sees a shift in priority in the regional director’s office.

“It feels as though the regional directors and their teams are being told not to go off-script, whereas before it felt the South West was quite innovative,” they say.

The current iteration of the office appears to be more “careful about not veering away from a policy-priority position,” the MAT leader continues.

Livings took over as regional director in 2024. Along with the South West regional director’s office, she is understood to be among the brains behind the government’s new regional school improvement teams.

Another point of pride for the region is the Trust Leaders Network.

Dave Baker, trust leader of Olympus Academy Trust (nine schools), set up the network in 2017 upon the request of Carter, who was then national schools commissioner, to initially act as an informal network for trust leaders to meet and share practice.

Now 120 members meet at the network’s six events across the year, which Baker says provide “invaluable support for trust leaders”, give MATs “great access” to the DfE regional team and act as a “source of professional development”.

“It has incredibly strong buy-in from trust leaders in the region and also from the DfE South West team, who are always present, plan with me and lead sessions,” Baker says.

Similar groups are beginning to form in other regions: a London Leaders Network launched in June and there are talks of setting up a similar network in the North West.

‘Suspicion’ from local authority primaries

The South West has the highest percentage of academies but still has a small number of maintained schools that oppose academisation, particularly primary schools.

One MAT leader, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells 91����: “Some trusts are offering support without trying to make the primary schools academies, whereas others are only supporting schools with the aim of making them academies.

“This is creating an air of suspicion among some of the maintained primary schools.”

Since 2020-21 there have been more primary academies than maintained primary schools in the region.

Changing policies from government - from the Conservatives’ scrapped White Paper to Labour’s “agnostic” approach to school structures - have also elicited a “two-track approach” towards academisation, the trust leader says.

“Some primary schools are circling the wagon against academisation,” they warn.

The MAT leader suspects that this could be a bigger issue in the South West due to the number of academies in the area. “Those schools that aren’t academised are set against it for a variety of reasons,” they say.

This anti-academy sentiment may have also filtered down from local authorities.

When working as regional director in the 2010s, Carter noticed that it was the bigger councils that were more resistant to academisation. “Big authorities were very protective of their space,” he says.

According to trust leaders working in the area, Devon council, in particular, has historically not been supportive of the academies movement.

One MAT chief executive who has schools in the county, who wishes to remain anonymous, knows of cases where Devon council has intervened over schools becoming academies.

When attempts were made to facilitate trusts to support maintained schools, it went down like a “cup of sick” with Devon local authority, the MAT leader adds.

Another trust leader working in the area agrees, saying that Devon council, which oversees more than 200 academy schools, has “never found a way to work with its trusts”.

“Being able to find a way of working constructively with their academies has been the major challenge for Devon,” they tell 91���� anonymously.

A spokesperson for Devon County Council says that it ”absolutely doesn’t recognise this opinion”.

“Devon County Council is committed to working in partnership with all schools and settings to ensure that every child in the county has the best possible education and start in life. We look forward to developing our Inclusion and Learning Strategy with partners and developing Inclusive Learning Communities that meet the needs of our children.”

The impact of academisation on local authorities is not limited to Devon.

“Rapid” academisation in Swindon has also created “pressures” within the council, Piper adds.

Initially Swindon local authority was “supporting and celebrating” the route towards academisation, she says.

But as a result of the growth of academies and wider pressures on councils, Piper warns, “the services councils can offer are severely diminished, and they’re struggling to retain staff”.

“That creates an additional pressure for everyone,” Piper adds.

Where is the South West heading?

As most schools in the region are now academies, trusts could be looking to collaborate in different ways in the upcoming years, with mergers one likely route.

Futura Learning Partnership (26 schools) and Olympus Academy Trust (nine schools) are awaiting approval for a planned merger.

And Venturers Trust, eight schools based in Bristol, merged with E-ACT in September, bringing the latter trust’s number of schools up to 30.

Dr Dan Nicholls, chief executive at The White Horse Federation, which runs 30 schools, believes the region is moving into a new phase.

“I think it’s maturing as opposed to mature,” says Nicholls, who was previously director of education at Cabot Learning Federation.

“Trusts are still growing and trying to understand what it is to be a trust, which is an interesting challenge in the South West because it’s quite fractal.”

The future focus should not necessarily be on growth, he says, but instead on how trusts can work together.

“That requires a grown-up conversation about not competing over different things but actually competing about what matters, which is about improving the lives of children in the region.”

Taylor agrees that there is an “increasing sense of system coherence in the South West”, with a stronger belief that being in a trust is “beneficial”.

Reflecting on the issues that the region faces, Hague says the South West offers a “glimpse into how, by working together rather than competing against each other, you can start to solve these common problems”.

Succession planning

“The first generation of CEOs are now beginning to leave the system, and that is going to present succession challenges to the smaller MATs,” says education consultant Blackman.

“How do you grow the next leader when you’ve only just got six or seven schools? That’s really difficult.”

Schemes like the SW100 - a school leadership programme aiming to train and nurture 100 of Devon and Cornwall’s next headteachers - have been created to combat recruitment issues.

SWIFT, a teaching hub that provides opportunities for networking and professional development for staff across trusts, also aims to develop the next generation of leaders in the region.

Find our interactive map of England’s multi-academy trusts by clicking here, where you will also find links to all of our MAT Tracker content

For the latest education news and analysis delivered every weekday morning, sign up for the 91���� Daily newsletter