����Vlog

The White Horse Federation is set to grow by a third, following mergers with a smaller chain and a single-academy trust (SAT).

The trust currently has 30 schools, including 24 primary schools, four secondary schools and two special schools.

It plans to take on nine primary schools from the Grove Learning Trust, and the primary SAT Goddard Park Primary School, all in Swindon.

The White Horse Federation already has 13 academies in the town, and these mergers will bring the trust’s total number of schools to 40.

The trust said the move aligns with its commitment to the schools White Paper’s ambition for all trusts to be geographically coherent and “rooted in communities”.

Dr Dan Nicholls, CEO of The White Horse Federation, said: “We believe this mutual understanding of Swindon, shared expertise, collaboration and our strong track record for improving schools will help us achieve our shared priority: to inspire the lives of all children with greater opportunity and choice.”

The merger is by the Department for Education.

Grove Learning Trust in difficult financial position

Grove Learning Trust had an in-year deficit of £513,000 in 2024-25, with £1.2 million in revenue reserves. 

Its staffing costs as a percentage of its general annual grant from the DfE were 112 per cent, according to its latest .

Trustees decided at the end of the last academic year to consider transferring the schools into a larger trust to increase the central team’s capacity and achieve greater financial stability.

Simon Cowley has been the interim CEO of Grove Learning since April and is also director of education at The White Horse Federation.

Anne-Marie Howroyd, chair of trustees at Grove Learning Trust, said: “Partnering with a larger, well-established multi-academy trust provided more capacity and broader opportunities to serve pupils and communities.”

She added: “We are confident that The White Horse Federation is well placed to support Grove Learning Trust to deliver on our shared ambitions, offering high-quality education and applying the equity needed to meet the needs of every child.”

Trust mergers across the country

There are proposals for five other MAT mergers across five English regions next month, and for six SATs to join a larger trust.

This includes all four primary schools from the Hawksmoor Learning Trust in West Northamptonshire, transferring to Orbis Education Trust, bringing its total to seven academies.

Lift Schools, the fifth biggest multi-academy trust (MAT) in England with 59 schools, plans to take on three primaries and one secondary school from the Cotswold Beacon Academy Trust. It also plans to bring in a local-authority-maintained primary school.

All five schools are in Gloucestershire, bringing Lift’s total to 64 and making it the joint-third-largest MAT in England.

The Wise Owl Trust’s five schools are proposed to transfer to Forward As One Church of England Multi Academy Trust in Manchester, bringing its total to 22 academies.

Small MATs fear being ‘squeezed’ into merger

Some small trust leaders warn that the direction set out in the DfE’s White Paper, combined with financial pressure, has left them with little choice but to consider a merger.

The CEO of a five-school trust, who asked not to be named, told ����Vlog the system increasingly felt “structurally designed to squeeze trusts like ours towards merger, whether we believe it is educationally right or not”.

Although the White Paper did not explicitly state that small MATs have no future, “the signals are impossible to ignore”, they said.

The idea of a “strong trust” is too often being conflated with scale, they warned, despite many smaller trusts being “deeply rooted in their communities” and able to respond quickly to their schools’ needs, they added.

Regional directors, advisers and auditors often exerted informal pressure by framing a merger as the “sensible” or “responsible” route, they asserted.

Funding pressures make it ‘difficult’ for small trusts

But the CEO said rising costs, special educational needs and disabilities pressures, recruitment challenges, estates issues and increasing compliance expectations were making it “almost impossible” for smaller MATs to remain sustainable independently.

Gulcin Sesli, co-CEO of The Spring Partnership Trust, a five-school primary trust in south-east London, echoed these concerns.

She said smaller trusts could be overlooked despite having strong systems, adding that larger trusts were often “recognisable” because of the “empire that they’ve grown”.

Her trust had built a “one school model”, with centralised services and aligned curriculum approaches, but funding pressures were making it increasingly difficult for small trusts to remain sustainable, with the trust having to “scrape” through budgets year on year.

Asked whether mergers are inevitable, Ms Sesli said: “I think it’s a matter of time.”