Half of England’s academy trusts lack elected or appointed parents in their governance

Education Uncovered analysis also shows fewer than one in 25 MAT boards feature elected or appointed parents

 

Fewer than one in 25 of England’s multi-academy trusts have two elected or appointed parents on their boards, with many of the larger trusts having many schools without any such representation within their local governance, either.

Fresh analysis of official Department for Education governance data, by this website, seems to underline the distance the academies policy has from any form of local democracy, with the vast majority of trust boards and almost half of local academy governing bodies not featuring any parents serving in that role.

The figures also indicate that both academy trusts and, to a lesser extent, local authority schools, are in many cases apparently not following requirements set out for them by the DfE, in terms of parental places within their governance structures.

 

The detail

The DfE’s Academy Trust Handbook sets out requirements for the make-up of academy governance structures, which tend also to be reflected in each trust’s constitution or articles of association. 

These rules say that multi-academy trusts should either have two elected parents on their overarching body, or on each school’s “local governing body*”. (If insufficient numbers of parents come forward, a parent can be appointed; there is a specific categorisation for this in governance records).

For this analysis, I looked at official school-by-school governance data which is available via the DfE’s “Get Information About Schools” spreadsheets. 

This listed governance arrangements for 1,495 multi-academy trusts. Of these, only 58 trusts had at least two elected or appointed parents on their overarching boards. That is only 3.8 per cent, or one in every 26 trusts.

The 58 trusts that did have such parents were generally small. Only four consisted of more than 10 schools, with the Diocese of Sheffield Academies Trust being the largest, at 17 academies. More than three quarters, or 44 of the 58, consisted of just one or two schools.

So, none of the largest trusts have two elected parents on their trust boards. The parent perspective, as potentially reflected on trust boards, then, seems not to something that the big chains have gone in for, in terms of positions on their boards.

And, overall, the fact that only 3.8 per cent of multi-academy trust boards have at least two parents means that some 96 per cent do not.

Across the entire multi-academy sector, the DfE’s spreadsheets list only 144 elected parents in total, plus 16 parents who had been appointed by a board “due to no election candidates”. Some 23 trusts had one elected or appointed parent on their board.

Local governance in academies

The above seems significant, since, within a multi-academy trust all strategic power ultimately sits with the board itself, rather than with local governance.

It is still worth looking, however, at the presence of parents within “local governing bodies” in academy trusts – not least because the DfE’s rules say that they should be there, if lacking on the board itself.

It appears from the DfE’s spreadsheets that around half of all academies are non-compliant with the DfE’s rules on this, since they lack both the two elected or appointed parents on their overarching board, and at individual school level.

I found governance records on the DfE’s spreadsheets for 9,350*** academies. Of these, 4,632 or 49.5 per cent had neither two elected/appointed parents on their overarching board, or on their individual “local governing body”.

It is possible to compile a list of trusts with the highest number of schools which are non-compliant in this way. These are all trusts which do not have two elected/appointed parent trustees, ranked by the number of their academies whose “local governing bodies” also have no elected/appointed parent trustees.

Remarkably, England’s largest academy trust, United Learning, has 69 of its schools  - or 77 per cent of its 90 academies – which are in this position. That is, there are not two elected/appointed parents on its overarching board, and for 69 of its schools, that is the case for their “local governing bodies” as well.

Delta Academies Trust has 45 academies which appear to be non-compliant in this way; for the Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education Trust, the figure is 40 academies; and for ARK Schools it is 39 (see full top 20 below).

Academy trusts with the highest number of “non-compliant” schools re parent governors

Academy trust	"Non-compliant" schools
United Learning Trust	69
Delta Academies Trust	45
Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education Trust	40
ARK Schools	39
Bishop Hogarth Catholic Education Trust	34
REAch2 Academy Trust	32
The Enquire Learning Trust	32
Bishop Bewick Catholic Education Trust	31
Bishop Chadwick Catholic Education Trust	30
Northern Education Trust	29
The Bath and Wells Diocesan Academies Trust	27
The Diocese of Ely Multi-academy Trust	27
Harris Federation	26
Hamwic Education Trust	25
Outwood Grange Academies Trust	25
The Thinking Schools Academy Trust	25
The Spencer Academies Trust	23
Cabot Learning Federation	22
Flying High Trust	22
Plymouth CAST	22

 

I have investigated this before, and continue to be puzzled as to why so many trusts seem not to be following what seem to be fairly straightforward rules.

It may be that the trusts will argue that they do have parents within their governance structures; it is just that they feature at a less formal level, such as within parent consultative bodies, which the trust has chosen to instigate rather than “local governing bodies”. However, the latter is the structure which is listed for each academy on the government’s official “Get Information About Schools” database. So, again, it is surprising to see elected/appointed parents not featuring at this level or at board level, within so many academy trusts.

Local authority schools

 It needs to be acknowledged, however, that even the local authority schools sector, which of course operates within local democracy, has a substantial number of schools which also appear to be non-compliant, in terms of having elected/appointed parents on their governing bodies.

DfE rules for maintained schools say that, for each governing body, there must be “at least 2 parent governors, elected where possible, otherwise appointed”.

I found 11,128 local authority schools with governance data****. Of these, 7,167 had at least two elected or appointed parents on their governing bodies.

So that means 64 per cent of local authority schools were compliant in this way; and 36 per cent were not.

Overall, this analysis suggests the need to have parents within school governance at a meaningful level is not being taken seriously by many institutions. This is the case mainly in the academies sector, but is by no means confined to it.

With elected parents – who in themselves will always only be in the minority on boards or governing bodies - being the only formal democratic mechanism, through which service users’ perspective might feature in an academy trust’s decision-making, the remoteness of the policy again seems underscored. I may continue to investigate in this field.

England’s schools system as a whole seems not to take community or consumer perspectives overly seriously, in terms of input into decision-making.

 

*Technically, within multi-academy trusts, “local governing bodies” are committees of the main board. However, the Academy Trust Handbook states that they are described as “local governing bodies” in the DfE’s model articles of association for academy trusts.

**Although the DfE spreadsheet was tracking governance arrangements in “multi-academy trusts,” some of them actually only have a single school, perhaps having registered as MATs but without having taken on extra institutions.  

***This is smaller than the total number of academies, which as at January 2025 stood at 11,321. I am unsure as to the reason for this difference.

****DfE data for January 2025 appear to indicate that there were only 10,325 local authority schools. So, again the disparity is somewhat puzzling.