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.