Any education system that wants to be world-class needs to continually ask itself: what does excellence look like?’
From free schools (Sweden) to maths mastery (Shanghai), England has gained much in recent years from studying how other jurisdictions design their systems.
And other countries are now looking at England’s multi-academy trusts. The strongest MATs have achieved what many thought impossible: sustainable school improvement, giving every child the chance to fulfil their potential.
Learning from multi-academy trusts
England’s academy trust model is not perfect, but after two decades it offers lessons worth heeding.
Recognising this potential, a philanthropic foundation in Australia, McKinnon, is now supporting Australian states to develop their own “multi-school organisation” model, adapting England’s hard-learned lessons for local contexts.
Over the past year, policymakers and education leaders from three Australian states have taken part in study tours to England. The goal? To understand how multi-academy trusts work, how they scale improvement and whether this model can take root in Australian soil.
The Tasmanian government has committed to a five-year trial, and we’re aiming for more states to follow its lead.
Here are the key insights that delegates are taking home - and what they are leaving behind on the tarmac at Heathrow.
Positive takeaways from the MAT system
1. The “Goldilocks” unit of improvement: delegates were struck by how trusts work best at a certain scale. The strongest were neither tiny nor sprawling. Typically, they brought together 10 to 50 schools; large enough to share expertise yet small enough to keep relationships central.
2. Clarity of leadership and accountability: the way leadership, accountability and support sit under one roof also left a strong impression. Delegates liked how a trust’s central executive and governing board carry responsibility for outcomes across the family of schools. For delegates, this created clarity on who is responsible, where decisions get made and how resources are reallocated when challenges arise.
3. A shared spine for curriculum, teaching and professional development: delegates saw the power of aligning on the fundamentals of high-quality teaching. In stronger trusts, curriculum, professional development and coaching were shared. This made good practice replicable. It also eased workload and protected it from staff turnover. Central teams produced shared materials, freeing teachers to focus on teaching.
4. Talent as a network asset: delegates also observed how talent flowed across schools. Specialists were deployed where they were needed most, promising headteachers were mentored and teachers accessed career pathways across the network. The principle - that a group of schools can create richer development and progression opportunities than any single school - resonated strongly.
5. Implementation, implementation, implementation: finally, delegates saw that success is not automatic. Where trusts were clear about their purpose, ambitious in their standards and disciplined about implementation, outcomes improved - including in communities with long histories of underperformance. That is why Tasmania’s multi-school organisation trial has an independent evaluation baked in from the outset, so that evidence, not ideology, guides future decisions.
What delegates didn’t like
1. Complexity for its own sake: delegates were less convinced by some of England’s regulatory and legal machinery, with the need to create new legal entities, transfer assets and navigate overlapping rules. This has created complexity without obvious educational benefit. The takeaway here was that accountability and clarity of roles and responsibilities are critical, but the structures to achieve them should be as simple as possible.
2. Unnecessary divergence on pay and conditions: delegates didn’t see compelling evidence that divergence from national pay bands was central to trust success. While flexibility to offer top-ups for hard-to-staff roles is important, in practice trusts adhere to national pay bands. Improvements have stemmed from leadership, curriculum and professional development rather than industrial differences. The lesson: collaboration and evidence-based practice, not contractual divergence, are the key to success.
3. Drift without a destination: perhaps the most sobering observation was the lack of a clear end goal. After more than 20 years, England still has no settled vision for the system, leading to fragmentation and policy oscillation. For Australia, the lesson is clear: set the destination early, define what success looks like at five and 10 years, and align the machinery to achieve it.
Where next for Australia?
Australia has many great schools, but it lacks a reliable way to take what works and ensure that it reaches every child. Drawing on the most successful aspects of England’s multi-academy trusts, the multi-school organisation model is designed to address this challenge. It aims to hardwire shared leadership, accountability and support across a family of schools, lightening the load on principals and creating the conditions for every teacher to keep improving.
Tasmania will launch Australia’s first multi-school organisation in early 2026. Recruitment of its founding CEO and head of operations is underway (interested in the job of a lifetime?). Tasmania may be the first mover, but it will not be the last.
These reflections from England give Australian policymakers and education leaders both inspiration and caution as they embark on their system reform journey.
Will Bickford Smith is an adviser at McKinnon, a philanthropic organisation in Australia, and former adviser to the UK government’s secretary of state for education
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