We would like to hear your views on our proposal to become a local Multi-Academy Trust (MAT). We encourage anyone interested in this issue to share their comments through our consultation form on this website. The consultation will run from 20^th February 2023 – 31^st March 2023. We would also welcome feedback on how we are carrying out this consultation. Please use the consultation form to give this feedback.

We value your views on our proposal and are asking our community to check our work and to let us know whether there is anything we have not considered. There is also a legal requirement for us to consult on becoming a local MAT.

We believe that becoming a local MAT is the best way to protect and improve our schools, and those are urgent priorities for us. We are consulting now to engage as many people as possible within our community and to minimise disruption. The autumn term is when all new students, parents, carers and staff get to know our schools, and we want to avoid consulting in the summer term to avoid any distraction from the exam season.

We are consulting from 20th February 2023 to 31st March 2023.

The consultation is open to everyone, and we hope that families, staff, students, community partners, other local schools and our wider local community will take the time to give us their views.

The main way to tell us your views is by using the form on this website. This form is also available on paper from the schools’ offices. We have arranged meetings for staff and parents at each school and will communicate details to these groups directly. We will be holding assemblies for our students and giving them an opportunity to share their views. We will also be holding a public meeting, which is open to all on 21^st March. Please register to attend here.

No. The decision whether or not to apply to become a local MAT is one the Governing Board will take, once it has received the views of the community in this consultation process. That’s why we’d really appreciate detailed feedback. We also think referendums tend to create more problems than solutions, particularly around turnout and legitimacy.

Governors have three statutory duties: to ensure the long-term strategic direction of the schools, to hold the executive leaders to account and to oversee the financial performance. We do not believe that setting long-term strategy is compatible with a snapshot of one group of stakeholders’ opinion at one particular time.

A corresponding example might be a local authority’s approach to consulting on plans to introduce residents’ parking permits throughout the borough. The local authority may have a very persuasive long-term rationale for its plans and may hold a consultation to get valuable local feedback which may affect its final plans and decision, but it’s unlikely to offer a binding ballot as a ballot is liable to provide a short-term response to a long-term problem.

Similarly, we haven’t included a tick box “do you support the proposal” question in our feedback form because we want substantive responses to inform the development of our plans and our ultimate decision. We are attempting to review questions weekly so that we can have a meaningful dialogue throughout the consultation period.

We will publish a report on our website as soon as possible after the consultation has closed. The report will summarise the views expressed across the community and include our response to the comments raised, together with our final decision.

Our consultation website is available in different languages with a key in the top right to change language.

You can find information about the Governing Board members here. Our Board contains people from a range of different backgrounds. Six of our governors are parents of children currently at Federation schools (two of these governors were elected by parents), and a seventh previously had children at Federation schools. One governor is a staff member elected by our staff. The three Headteachers and Executive Headteacher of our schools are also governors. Our governance has been recognised as a strength in our schools’ two most recent Ofsted reports.

We believe the period from 20^th February to 31^st March 2023, including a schedule of meetings for staff and parents at all schools and a public meeting gives all our stakeholders a reasonable opportunity to respond to our proposals.

We also need to balance the need for a vigorous and meaningful consultation period against the impact on the wider life of the school which is why the consultation is timed to take place before the summer term and exam period. In the autumn term many families and some staff are new and getting to know the school.

The Federation has spent £40,656.00 (at 6 March 2023).  This sum covers the following items since December 2020:

• Options for growth external advice
• Legal advice
• Communication support
• Website design, hosting and content management, including video production

Costs have largely been met from an unspent DfE grant of £23,000 from the last consultation process and an award of £15,000 from the Leathersellers’ Company to support the schools in exploring a potential academisation. The Federation also has a budget of £21,500 in financial year 2022-23 for legal fees.

A MAT is a group of state-funded schools run under a single governing board and funded directly by the Department for Education. At the moment, we are a federation, which is a group of state funded schools run under a single governing board where our funding comes via the local authority.

As a Governing Board, our duty is to protect and improve the education our schools offer local children and young people. We believe that becoming a local MAT is the best way to protect and improve our schools. Collaboration has played an important role in protecting and improving the quality of education across our schools. As a local MAT, our aim would be to build on our proven model of collaboration and extend our positive local impact by having a few other primaries in our group of schools. By sharing resources, ideas and solutions, we can further improve our schools. Becoming a local MAT, with a careful strategy of steady, incremental and local growth, offers the best route to do this.

We’d also like to be able to take advantage of new opportunities for funding and improvement offered by the Department for Education, but they tend only to make these available to MATs. Finally, we’d like to be able to choose how we spend all the funding we receive – as a federation, a percentage is retained by the local authority.

Collaboration has supported improvements across the Federation over the last few years and we have worked as a cluster of schools.

The single governance structure binds schools together in partnership with shared accountability to work through difficulties together, rather than to separate when there are challenges. For example, all of the school leaders and schools worked closely during Covid to support each other, learn from good practice and reduce workload.  We operated a single hub school to make sure we offered the best possible provision across the Federation to key workers and vulnerable children. In the secondary level the moderation required for teacher and centre assessed grades was stronger and more robust across the Federation due to the formal collaboration we had.

In the first years of the Federation the leaders collaborated closely and learnt from best practice and success as well as mistakes made.  For example, learning from OFSTED at Vale supported Ladywell to improve practices.  Ladywell began its work on CARES, inspired by the work done on the Vale Values.  Over the more recent years the ethos across the Federation has been ‘stronger together’ with values of ambition, inclusivity, collaboration, excellence.  There have been formal teaching and learning reviews across the primary and secondary phases to support formal collaboration amongst staff, sharing of good practice amongst office and support staff and common INSET and twilights for all staff.  We are now working on creativity as our teaching and learning focus across the Federation, working alongside Professor Bill Lucas.

We do not have the same critical mass at primary to support collaboration and improvement that we have at secondary. We have 14 forms across one year group at secondary, whereas we only have 3 forms at primary. An example of recent high-quality formal collaboration came through a primary maths review where leaders across the two schools were able to share good practice and bring together the subject leads.  If we had a couple more primary schools, we would be able to have a broader cohort of maths leaders who could come together in subject network meetings, see practice across more than just one other school, and ultimately have a greater impact on our pupils. We want to continue to improve our current schools (together with those that join us). This is not about taking on under-performing schools, or about securing intake for our secondaries (we have no plans to change our admissions policies). More formal collaboration at primary, like we have at secondary, would further improve our schools and the education we offer our pupils.

We know that our schools have improved by collaborating with each other. Prendergast Ladywell and Prendergast Vale have gone from an Ofsted rating of “Requires Improvement” to “Good”. Prendergast School has been rated as “Outstanding” in the last three inspections and we remain focused on maintaining high standards in the face of increasingly stringent Ofsted requirements. We’ve also learned that this collaboration is most effective through a formal structure – through the schools being part of the same organisation – rather than through informal collaboration. Collaboration with schools inside a local MAT structure is likely to improve all schools involved as we share resources, ideas and solutions.

After the last consultation in 2015, a legal issue arose that raised doubt over whether the application for academy orders was valid. Governors decided not to proceed at that time, focusing instead on improving standards in our schools. We now have an almost entirely new Governing Board (only one current governor was serving in 2015), who have considered how to continue to improve our schools in the current circumstances, including a worsening financial situation for the local authority. Our recommendation is that becoming a local MAT is the best way to protect and improve education for children and young people in our schools.

No.

As a Federation that includes a Voluntary Aided School (Prendergast School) and two Foundation Schools (Prendergast Ladywell and Prendergast Vale),  our governing board owns the schools’ land, employs all of the schools’ staff and is responsible for all admissions to the schools.

This is different to a local authority community school, where the local authority owns the land, employs the staff and is responsible for admissions. Of the 14 secondary schools in Lewisham, only four are currently Community Schools (Conisborough College, Deptford Green, Forest Hill and Sydenham School).

The governing board of the Federation is a “corporate body” which is governed by statutes, but it doesn’t have a single constitutional document. If we become a local MAT, the ownership and responsibilities of the governing board would transfer to a charitable trust, with a written constitution (known as the Articles of Association).

Everyone involved in the governance of the Federation is unpaid. Governors who are staff members, such as the Headteachers and the elected staff member are paid for their jobs, but receive no additional payment for their responsibilities as governors. All governance roles in a local MAT are also unpaid.

The school buildings at Prendergast School are owned by the governing board.

The school buildings at Prendergast Vale and Prendergast Ladywell were built using Private Finance Initiative funding, as was common for other public buildings at the time.

The school buildings at Prendergast Vale are owned by a Private Finance Company controlled by Amber Infrastructure which is a private infrastructure investment manager tasked with profit maximising the returns on their investment.  This would not change if we became a Trust.

The secondary school buildings at Prendergast Ladywell are owned by a Private Finance Company controlled by Infrared Capital Partners, which is a private infrastructure investment manager, tasked with profit maximising the returns on their investment.  This would not change if we became a Trust.

The arguments about assets being moved from local authority ownership to private ownership do not apply in our case. The local authority does not own any of the schools’ assets. Instead, the entity owning the assets is being put on a more transparent and publicly accountable basis.

Yes. But we don’t believe there is any risk of regretting our decision and wanting to reverse it because we would be turning our existing federation into a local MAT and preserving the distinctive identities and ethos of our schools, rather than joining an existing MAT.

Academy schools have been a growing part of the educational landscape for the past 20 years under Labour, coalition and Conservative governments. Today, three-quarters of secondary-aged children and over a third of primary-aged children are educated in academy schools. Although the government’s appetite for compelling schools to become academies may come and go, we do not foresee any move away from the Department for Education’s core preference for academy schools.

Yes, when looking at the best way to achieve our priority of improving our schools we looked at a number of alternatives to becoming a local MAT, but discounted them for the following reasons:

Staying as a hard federation 

We would not be able to fulfil our strategic aim of incremental growth at primary level. We are already the largest federation in the UK by pupil numbers, and although we’re legally only 3 schools, with 2 primaries, 3 secondaries and sixth form we’re practically 6 schools. The Governance Handbook recognises the limits of federation governance beyond three schools. Our governance model is not sustainable for our current schools, which leads to future risk.

Becoming a soft federation 

Becoming a soft federation would be a step backwards. As a soft federation the schools would become separate legal entities. Each school would have a separate governing board, but there would be no unifying structure. The structure for formal collaboration between the schools, that is one of the reasons for our success, would be removed. It would also cost more money, as we would not have the same economies of scale.

Joining an existing Multi Academy Trust 

This would likely involve compromising on our values and indenity, and would result in our schools having less autonomy rather than more autonomy.

Forming an Umbrella Trust (sometimes referred to as a Foundation Trust). 

An Umbrella Trust is a charity established to offer services and support to a number of schools. It does not alter the legal status of the schools themselves. Schools under an umbrella trust can be either academy schools or maintained schools, and can be federated (hard or soft) or standalone. This would not solve the challenges presented by our legal structure.

Becoming a Co-operative Multi Academy Trust. 

This is a type of Multi-Academy Trust where a “forum” acts as an electoral college in respect of certain appointments (sometimes directly, sometimes in an advisory capacity). We spent some time considering the advantages and disadvantages of this governance model, but it would not be straightforward to combine with our two foundation bodies (the Leathersellers Company and the Prendergast School Trust), and on balance we thought it better to enhance the elected representation in the standard MAT model than pursue this route.

We then focused on how to create the best version of a local MAT that addressed our concerns about accountability and how to safeguard our values for the future.

Trustees in a MAT structure are unpaid volunteers. The CEO / Executive Headteacher is paid by the Trust.  In this case, the CEO would get paid by the Trust as they are an employee of the Trust. Everyone involved in the governance of the Federation is unpaid. Governors who are staff members, such as the Headteachers and the elected staff member are paid for their jobs, but receive no additional payment for their responsibilities as governors. All governance roles in a local MAT are also unpaid.

We believe that becoming a local MAT would make us more attractive to schools that may want to join us. We would get to choose how we spend the money we’re given, without a percentage being spent by the local authority on things we might not need.

Also, the Department for Education isn’t really supporting or updating other types of school structure, particularly less common ones such as federations.

If we became a local MAT, we would undertake a full due diligence process before agreeing that a school could join us. Our first priority would be to maintain the current high standards in our existing schools.

Our federation-wide ethos of collaboration and sharing best practice has transformed local education, enabling thousands of children and young people to benefit from an education in a Good or Outstanding school. We believe that our strong track record of school improvement, commitment to our local communities and respecting the individual character of our schools would be attractive to other schools with similar goals.

No. We have not approached any schools and at the start date of this consultation we are not in discussion with any schools about joining us.

As the Governing Board, we will consider all the responses to this consultation before making the final decision on whether or not to apply to become a local MAT (this is known as applying for academy orders). We may revise our proposals in response to the consultation. An application for academy orders is made to the Department for Education, and the Regional Director for Schools would let us know whether we have been successful.

We have voted by a majority to consult on the recommendation that the Federation should become a local MAT. Our policy is to record our decisions either as a unanimous decision or as a majority decision. We do not record the numbers of votes.

No. When the Federation consulted about becoming a local MAT in 2015, we had already applied for academy orders. This time we are holding the consultation before applying for academy orders.

The governing board has released a pack of previously confidential minutes and papers about this proposal. This pack has been released in the interests of transparency and does not form part of this consultation. It can be found on the Leathersellers’ Federation of Schools website here:
https://www.leathersellers-federation.com/238/minutes-of-governing-board-meetings

In the summer term the governing board will consider all the responses submitted through the consultation website and will publish a summary report. The governing board will then decide whether to make any changes to the proposal and will decide whether or not to apply for academy orders. If an application is made and accepted by the DfE, there would then be an administrative process that is likely to take at least six months, so it would be 2024 before there could be any change in the legal structure of the Federation.

As a federation including a voluntary-aided school we already have a lot more independence than most schools. We own our land, we are the employer of our staff, and we are also our own admissions authority. In many ways, pupils, staff and families would not see many changes.

No. We would still be called the Leathersellers’ Federation of Schools, and the individual schools would still be called Prendergast Ladywell School, Prendergast School, Prendergast Vale School and Prendergast Primary School.

No. Our uniforms would not change if we became a local MAT. Prendergast School (only) plans to consult on its school uniform within the next two years, but this will take place regardless of whether or not we become a local MAT.

No, there would not be any changes to the curriculum.

Yes. We have no intention of making any redundancies or any changes to our staff structure should we become a local MAT.

No. These would stay the same and would continue to be in line with our neighbouring schools in Lewisham that are funded via the local authority.

If we become a local MAT, we commit to using some money we save from the local authority to employ an educational psychologist for three days a week across the Federation (serving each school for one day a week).  Currently we have an educational psychologist for one day a week which we buy from the local authority.  An educational psychologist employed by the Federation would mean that we could give more support to some of our most vulnerable students and also speed up the Education & Health Care Plan (EHCP) application process for students.

If we become a local MAT, we will continue to have the same values of ambition, inclusivity, collaboration and excellence. We will remain committed to having excellent provision for all SEND students, whether we are a Federation or a local MAT. This includes having a SEND link governor / trustee to ensure robust oversight of the provision across the schools.

Ofsted assesses SEND in the same way regardless of whether a school is in a MAT or a Federation and there are statutory duties laid out in the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Code of Practice.

The LA would still receive central funding from the government to help all schools, whether academies or community schools, to support students with EHCPs.

Students with EHCPs would have greater access to an educational psychologist (please see FAQ 5.7)

All students who are entitled to school meals and already receive them would continue to receive them. The only difference would be that future applications would be made directly to the school rather than to the local authority. The schools would continue to make every effort to encourage families who are entitled to receive school meals to apply for them, as the schools receive additional funding for these families.

Yes. Nothing would change. The education we provide would continue to be free of charge, as it is now.

No. The Federation already sets its own admissions policy and would continue to do so. We do not plan to make any changes to our admissions if we become a local MAT. There are no changes to our admissions for parents and carers who have applied for a place at one of our schools for September 2023. We have recently concluded a consultation on our admissions policies for 2024-25 and this is available here.

Yes, we believe the individual character of each of our schools is really important. Our group of schools would still be guided by the same vision, mission and values as they are today, and the schools would retain their valued individual identities, with their own leadership teams and staff accountable to their local communities.

Yes.

We will continue to play an active part in the Lewisham community of schools.

The Lewisham five-year Education Strategy stresses the importance of leadership within the school, the quality of learning and teaching, the relevance of the curriculum and how the school works within its community. We agree with this and will continue to play an active part.

Yes, our Headteachers support the recommendation to become a local MAT. The support of our Headteachers is essential, and without their support we would not have taken the decision to go to consultation.

We cannot speak on behalf of all our staff, but we hope our staff recognise that our duty to protect and improve the excellent education that their efforts have helped bring about is what lies at the heart of our proposal. We are inviting our staff to take part in the consultation and have a dedicated programme of information available to them.

We already have valued members of staff working across our schools who do not have qualified teacher status, either because they are still in training or are working in specialist subject roles that do not require it. This would continue to be the case if we became a local MAT.

Yes.  Our current employees’ existing terms and conditions of employment would be protected under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (TUPE) Regulations 2006. This means all employees would transfer employment from the Governing Board of the Leathersellers’ Federation of Schools to the MAT on their current terms and conditions.  Staff would also not see any impact on their pensions.

Should we become a Trust then we would make a commitment to ensure that all new staff and staff who changed positions remain on national terms and conditions, known as School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions (STPCD) and Burgundy Book (for teachers) and NJC Green Book (for support staff). We would seek a binding agreement with the unions to ensure alignment with national terms and conditions for all current and new employees and all employees who change roles or positions within the Federation. We would also seek a binding agreement that unqualified teachers would only be engaged in the same circumstances that are permitted for maintained schools.

Staff would not see any impact on their pensions if we became a local MAT as continuity of service would be retained. All staff would continue to have access to either the Teachers’ Pension Scheme or the Local Government Pension Scheme (as applicable).

Lewisham awards enhanced redundancy pay, although does not give schools any extra funds to pay for it, and if we became a local MAT, we would consult trade unions on whether to follow national terms and conditions for redundancy pay for new employees. A few of our support staff are paid to work during school holidays as well as during term-time. Currently their annual leave calendar starts in April and ends in March. The annual leave calendar for all other staff begins in September and ends in August. If we became a local MAT, we would consult trade unions and employees on whether to make the annual leave calendar for all staff start in September and end in August. This is an administrative change and all staff would have the same amount of annual leave as they do now.

In addition, the Governing Board currently provide extra benefits to our staff, which can be found here:  https://tinyurl.com/4ep9fauu.  We would continue to value our staff if we became a local MAT, as we do now.

We remain committed to a strong relationship with recognised trade unions and would continue to encourage trade union membership.

No. Our relationships with trade unions are important to us and our staff, and we would continue to encourage trade union membership if we became a local MAT.

Our group of schools would be led by our Executive Headteacher, Paula Ledger, as they are now.

We want our Federation to be led by an experienced headteacher, although we recognise that there are benefits in using job titles that are common and understood within the rest of the sector. If we become a local MAT, our Executive Headteacher would be called “Executive Headteacher and CEO”. Our Director of Finance and Operations would become “Chief Financial Officer” in line with Department for Education guidance. The pay scales for these roles would not change.

We are proposing to become a local MAT because we believe it would be the best way to improve our schools and the education we offer our pupils. There would also be financial benefits to becoming a local MAT, but they are not the main reason behind our proposal.

Currently, Lewisham charges the Federation £222,000 every year (about 1% of our total budget). One element of this is insurance and the Federation would need to join the Risk Protection Arrangement if we became a local MAT. The cost would be about £60,000 (£21 per pupil). This would leave us with around £160,000 of additional budget.

Our core funding for the Federation is around £22,200,000, so £160,000 is not a huge proportion. However, about 80% of school budgets go on staff, and around 12% go on premises, so £160,000 can have a significant impact. Our schools would be able to reinvest this money into other services or support that they felt they needed, perhaps an Educational Psychologist or extra teaching or pastoral support.

We choose to buy some services from the local authority in addition to the 1% charge, and we pay for these in addition to the local authority charge. Examples include speech and language support, an educational psychologist service and support from Drumbeat. As a local MAT, we would continue to do this.

The amount of money provided to the schools by central government would be the same. However, maintained schools receive the money via the local authority, and the local authority keeps a percentage to provide central services. As a local MAT, the money comes directly to the schools, without losing a percentage to the local authority. We would need to buy some (but not all) of what the local authority provides for their percentage. Crucially, our school leaders would be able to decide how to spend all of the funding in ways they believe would deliver the best results for our pupils.

As the Governing Board of the Federation, we currently own our land and buildings, and if we become a local MAT, the ownership would transfer to the MAT. Our PFI contracts (at Prendergast Ladywell Secondary and Prendergast Vale) would continue to be overseen by the local authority.

No. Our forecast for running the central team as a local MAT is in line with our current costs for running our existing central team. Our leadership pay would continue to be determined by Teachers Pay & Conditions (STPCD). Our pay committee would take independent advice on the level of salaries, as they do now, and we expect to follow DfE guidance on pay for our Executive Headteacher and our Director of Finance & Operations as published in DfE Guidance.

Yes. We want to be at the heart of our communities, providing excellent education and facilities for the benefit of local people. Each week over 40 organisations hire out our schools for a variety of activities from sports to drama where people of all ages and backgrounds come together.

Each school would have a local governing board, and those local governing boards would hold the schools to account. The local MAT would have a Trust Board, who would be responsible for the oversight of the group of schools. The local MAT would also have Members who are responsible for making sure the governance is effective. Ultimately, MATs report to the Department for Education through the Education & Schools Funding Agency and Regional Director for Schools.

The Department for Education recommends that MATs have five Members. The Leathersellers’ Company and the Prendergast School Trust as institutions would each be a Member. The Leathersellers’ Company would also appoint two individual Members and Prendergast School Trust would appoint one individual Member.

The Leathersellers’ Company is a 600-year-old organisation in the City of London. It was founded in 1444 to represent and support those involved in the leather trade. Today the Company and The Leathersellers’ Foundation work together to enable individuals and communities to foster opportunity through education, and support a sustainable UK leather industry. The Company and Foundation have a strong focus on education and have been helping to improve social mobility in Lewisham since the Federation’s origins in 1885, when The Leathersellers’ Company was approached to provide land for the original Prendergast School in Rushey Green. The Company and Foundation continue to support the schools today and since 2018 have approved £1.3m of funding. The Foundation also supports alumni of the schools through its student grants programme.

The Leathersellers are committed to the long-term support of the schools, and future financial support will be provided whether or not we become a local MAT. The Leathersellers’ Company currently appoints a minority of our schools’ governors, an arrangement that would continue if we became a local MAT. During 2021/22, The Leathersellers’ Foundation awarded £3.4m to charitable causes. Of this, £1.04m was given to educational initiatives and the Leathersellers’ Federation of Schools received just under a fifth of this.

The Prendergast School Trust was created under the will of Dr Joseph Prendergast, and the funds were originally used to establish a private grammar school for girls and pay for scholarship places.

This school became the modern-day Prendergast School. The charity continues to support the Federation today. The charity’s constitution dates back to 1887, and the charity’s board is currently applying to the charity commission to become a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) with a modern constitution. This constitution will ensure that a majority of the CIO’s trustees are independent of the schools’ governors and the Leathersellers’ Company.

The local MAT structure we are proposing would increase our accountability to our community.

There is currently no meaningful accountability above the governing board. Our last financial audit from the local authority was almost five years ago in July 2018. While the local authority has a nominated governor on our board, the governors propose an individual for them to appoint.

Our proposal for a local MAT has three layers of governance. At the top are Members. Two of the members would be the charitable organisations that founded Prendergast School, The Leathersellers’ Company (LSC) and the Prendergast School Trust (PST). There would be three further individuals, two would be appointed by the LSC and one would be appointed by PST. PST would appoint its individual member following a recruitment process that would be open to the community. Members are hands-off and provide oversight of the governance. The constitution of the MAT cannot be changed without the agreement of 75% of the Members, i.e. 4 out of the 5. This means, in effect, that both charitable organisations would need to agree to any future changes.

The local MAT would have a MAT Board. This is most closely aligned with our current governing board. We anticipate it would be smaller, likely around eleven people. The LSC would appoint a minority of the MAT Board (they currently appoint a minority of the Governing Board). We would have two elected parents on the MAT Board. Normally, MATs choose not to have any elected parents on their MAT Board. We agree that the way MATs are typically formed does reduce local accountability. We think that is wrong, which is why we have committed to having two elected parents at the most senior decision-making level of governance. These elected positions would be written into the constitution, which could only be changed with the agreement of 75% of the Members. It is worth noting that proportionally the elected voice would almost double (from 2/21 to 2/11). We would expect the balance of positions on the MAT Board to be advertised and appointed according to skills and experience and, as now, we anticipate that a significant proportion of these would be filled by parents.

We would then add Local Governing Boards (LGB) for each school – this is a layer of governance that does not currently exist. We currently have a “School Improvement Committee” for each school, but these are formed of members of the governing board. In our proposal, the LGBs would have an entirely separate membership from the MAT Board and each LGB would have two elected parents and one elected staff member.

Overall, with our current three schools, we would move from two elected parents to eight elected parents, and from one elected staff member to three elected staff members. The total number of elected representatives involved in the Federation’s governance would increase from three to 11.

We would also commit to holding a public session at the proposed local MAT’s annual general meeting, so that any member of our community can ask questions and hold our MAT Board and Members to account. Again, we propose to write this into the local MAT’s constitution so that it is protected for the future.

As a local MAT we are required to have an external audit every year, and to publish annual accounts.

A further benefit of becoming a local MAT is that it would increase the number of people involved in the governance of our schools, beyond what is possible in our current structure (as our current structure only allows for one layer of governance). This is important as we believe our current governance is not sustainable, even without growth, as it relies on very significant commitments from a relatively small number of people. The Federation’s experience has been that when governance is weak, school standards are at risk of either slipping or not improving quickly enough and this is reflected in the Ofsted reports at Prendergast Ladywell (2016) and Prendergast Vale (2015). Making our governance model more sustainable is key to protecting and improving our schools because it is important that we have the governance capacity to support our schools to be better.

This is also borne out in The Governance Handbook 2020 (5.1, 6) which states:

“When the number of schools the board governs grows, it might try to develop its existing governance model to form a small MAT or federation of two or three schools, but growth beyond three schools usually represents the first real need to overhaul governance arrangements.”

Our Federation is technically three schools, but Prendergast Ladywell and Prendergast Vale each have a primary and a secondary phase, and Prendergast School has a secondary and sixth form, so the governance workload more closely resembles that of six schools.

The Federation has proven that our model of local control of our schools, where no single constituency has a majority, works, and we want to embed its successful constitution in the community so that it survives the current governing board.

Yes, we would. We believe local accountability is critically important. Our proposal is to have two elected parents and one elected staff member on our local governing boards. We would also have two elected parents on our local MAT board. This is unusual. The DfE has a “strong preference” against us having any employees on the MAT board, other than the Executive Headteacher. MATs are required to have an AGM, and we would commit to holding a public session to our AGM so that any member of the local community can hold us to account.

We expect that the initial local MAT board would be drawn from our existing governors. Any vacancies would be advertised in the community and appointed according to skills and experience. The Leathersellers’ Company would have the right to appoint a minority of the local MAT board, as they currently have the right to appoint a minority of governors. We would have two elected parents on the local MAT board.

The regulations for the financial oversight of MATs are much more stringent than for maintained schools, and we welcome that increased scrutiny. For example, as a local MAT we would have to have an annual independent financial audit, and would be accountable to the Education Skills Funding Agency and the Regional Schools Director. We would have to publish annual accounts. As maintained schools, we are audited by the local authority, which last happened in 2018.

No, our proposal does not involve a sponsor, or any new external organisation that is not currently associated with the schools.

The governing board of the Federation believes that the schools are accountable to the community and that they function and succeed as collaborative partnerships between the staff, the families and the charities that helped found Prendergast School over 125 years ago. The governing board believes that it is consistent to hold that while the schools are the community’s, the decision on the schools’ future administrative structure is the governing board’s.

We are proposing a “triple-lock” of protection to ensure that our values and culture, and the commitments we have made during this consultation, can withstand any future change in leadership.

A MAT’s Members sit above the MAT’s board to ensure good governance. The MAT’s Members have two key powers: they can amend the MAT’s constitution, and they can dismiss its board. The DfE recommends that MATs have five Members.

Often, a MAT’s Members will be individuals. We are proposing that the two charitable organisations that founded Prendergast School in 1890 are our Members. The Leathersellers’ Company would be a Member (and would appoint two members) and the Prendergast School Trust would be a Member (and would appoint one member).

Both the Leathersellers’ Company and the Prendergast School Trust have a commitment to Lewisham and have supported our schools and protected their values for over 130 years. To change a MAT’s constitution requires the support of 75% of Members, so both of these charitable organisations would effectively need to agree to any changes.

The third element of protection is that, unlike the vast majority of MATs, we are proposing to have two elected parents at the top decision-making body, the MAT Board. These elected positions will be protected by the constitution.

Yes, you can find the proposed Articles of Association that we would submit with an application for academy orders here.