Guidance

Multi-academy trusts: establishing and developing your trust

How MATs can grow their trust, including using a trust partnership arrangement.

• From: Department for Education
• Published: 9 December 2016
• Last updated: 6 July 2023 — See all updates

Applies to England

Documents

Trust partnerships: guidance for academy trusts and prospective joiners

PDF, 152 KB, 11 pages

Trust partnerships service level agreement

MS Word Document, 105 KB

Multi-academy trust (MAT): assurance framework

PDF, 212 KB, 15 pages

MAT assurance framework: how to use guide

PDF, 171 KB, 12 pages

Details

Trust partnerships guidance

This document:

• explains what trust partnerships are and how they work
• provides some examples of trusts and schools who have entered into a partnership

Trust partnership service level agreement

This is an example of the legal document required to formalise a trust partnership. It has been written for use by a multi-academy trust and school but can be adapted where needed.

MAT assurance framework

This is a voluntary tool to help academy trusts understand their most significant areas of strength and challenge.

Information to support local authorities interested in setting up a multi-academy trust is also available.

For information about DfE’s role in making academy trust commissioning decisions see Commissioning high-quality trusts.

Published 9 December 2016
Last updated 6 July 2023 + show all updates

1. 6 July 2023

   'Building strong academy trusts: guidance for academy trusts and prospective converters' removed. Link to new guidance, ‘Commissioning high-quality trusts’, added.

2. 23 September 2022

   Updated section 2.4 of 'Trust partnerships: guidance for academy trusts and prospective joiners' to reflect the new trust and school improvement offer for the 2022 to 2023 academic year.

3. 25 May 2022

   Added a link to information on local authority-established multi academy trusts.

4. 12 October 2021

   Added an updated version of 'Trust partnerships: guidance for academy trusts and prospective joiners'.

5. 19 May 2021

   Updated 'building strong academy trusts: guidance for academy trusts and prospective converter' and 'Trust partnerships guidance'. Replaced the 'Multi-academy trust (MAT): school improvement capacity framework' with a 'Multi-academy trust (MAT): assurance framework' and guidance on how to use this framework.

6. 28 April 2021

   Updated 'Building strong academy trusts'. Added 'Trust partnerships guidance' and 'Trust partnership service level agreement'. Removed 'Multi-academy trust (MAT): resources', 'Multi-academy trust (MAT): development programme resource' and Multi-academy trust (MAT): good practice guidance and expectations for growth'.

7. 14 February 2020

   Added updated MAT school improvement capacity framework.

8. 31 October 2019

   Added an updated version of the 'Multi-academy trust (MAT): school improvement capacity framework'.

9. 14 June 2019

   Added 'Multi-acadamy trust (MAT): school improvement capacity framework'.

10. 6 July 2018

    Added 'MAT development programme: resource'.

11. 11 June 2018

    Added updated resources for multi-academy trusts.

12. 9 December 2016

    First published.