Academy trust that brought in the nine-day fortnight “needs classes of 120 to allow it to continue”

Dixons Academies Trust policies under the spotlight as it consults on redundancies.

 

An academy trust which has won national headlines for introducing a nine-day working fortnight for its staff is also regularly running classes of up to 120 pupils in some of its schools, with management having linked the two, Education Uncovered understands.

Dixons Academies Trust, based in Bradford in West Yorkshire and generally serving schools in disadvantaged communities, is said by the National Education Union to have argued that it needs the “masterclasses” to free up staff to take one day off every two weeks- although this is contested by the NEU which says the chain should be employing more teachers.

The union said that Dixons has been grouping more than one class together in almost all of its secondary schools, sometimes as a result of teacher absence, in recent years, but that the practice has become more regular during 2025-26. In “most schools”, it said, double, triple or even quadruple classes have become part of the timetable– a routine experience for particular groups of pupils and their teachers, throughout the year. Dixons has said that it is "typically [used] in around one to three per cent" of lessons.

The practice has come to light as the union lines up for the possibility of what Dixons says would be the first strike action in its 35-year history, at at least one of its schools, over looming redundancies and “unreasonable management practices,” including the “masterclasses”.

In a statement to staff last month, Dixons' chief executive, Luke Sparkes, said that it did not want to make redundancies, but suggested that they needed to happen given falling rolls at its schools.  

He wrote: “When student rolls fall permanently and costs rise faster than income, we have a duty to protect the long-term health of our trust.” The statement added that the “masterclasses,” which it called “dynamic student groupings” were not a crisis measure but a “proven teaching model used for a decade”.

Dixons itself also responded at length to this website this week, stressing that its nine-day fortnight remained well-supported, that it has reduced the number of potential redundancies from 45 to 14, and that these were driven by funding pressures facing schools across the country. 

CORRECTION: This story as first published said that Dixons had not responded to my request for comment. This was wrong, and was my mistake: I did not spot the response. Dixons' position is now reported more fully in the main body of the text, and via a longer response at the end.