Multi-academy trusts: charities or corporate empires?
Multi-academy trusts now run over half of state schools in England as exempt charities. But their scale, executive pay, and corporate structures raise uncomfortable questions about whether the charitable model still fits.
The debate in brief
Multi-academy trusts (MATs) are charitable companies that run state-funded schools in England. Since the Academies Act 2010 accelerated the conversion of maintained schools to academy status, the sector has grown rapidly. As of January 2025, academies accounted for around 83% of secondary schools and around 46% of primary schools in England, with the largest MATs running sixty or more schools across multiple regions. The government's ambition, under both Conservative and Labour administrations, has been to bring all schools into strong MATs over time.
MATs are exempt charities -- meaning they are registered with the Department for Education rather than the Charity Commission, and are regulated by the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA). They must operate exclusively for charitable purposes, reinvest all surplus into their educational mission, and are governed by boards of unpaid trustees. In legal terms, they are charities. In practice, the largest MATs have annual revenues exceeding 300 million pounds, employ thousands of staff across dozens of sites, and are led by chief executives earning salaries that would be unremarkable in the corporate sector but attract intense scrutiny in the charitable one.
Quick takeaways
| Question | Short answer |
|---|---|
| Are multi-academy trusts charities? | Yes -- they are exempt charities, structured as companies limited by guarantee with exclusively charitable objects. |
| Who regulates them? | The Department for Education and the ESFA, not the Charity Commission. MATs are exempt charities under Schedule 3 of the Charities Act 2011. |
| How big are the largest MATs? | The largest trusts run 60+ schools with annual revenues above 300 million pounds and thousands of employees. |
| What do MAT CEOs earn? | The average CEO salary at large MATs (those with more than 7,500 pupils) exceeded £200,000 for the first time in 2026, reaching £204,548 (Kreston UK Academies Benchmark Report 2026). Some CEOs at the largest trusts earn considerably more. The ESFA publishes related party transaction data but pay disclosure remains inconsistent. |
| Is there a public benefit question? | MATs provide free state education, so the public benefit case is more straightforward than for fee-charging schools -- but critics argue corporate behaviours undermine charitable ethos. |
| What is the governance concern? | Trustees are often appointed rather than elected, and local governing bodies have limited powers, raising questions about accountability to parents and communities. |
The arguments
The case that MATs are legitimate charities
The charitable purpose of multi-academy trusts is the advancement of education -- one of the oldest and most uncontroversial heads of charity in English law. Unlike independent schools, MATs provide free education funded by the state. There is no fee-charging public benefit question. Every pupil in every MAT school receives their education without charge, and MATs are legally prohibited from distributing profits. All surplus must be reinvested in the trust's educational mission.
Supporters argue that the MAT model brings significant advantages: economies of scale in procurement and back-office functions, the ability to move resources and expertise between schools, and a governance structure that can intervene quickly when individual schools are struggling. The Department for Education's own analysis has found that schools in strong MATs improve faster than comparable maintained schools, particularly in disadvantaged areas. Sir David Carter, the former National Schools Commissioner, has consistently argued that the trust model is the most powerful vehicle for driving school improvement at scale.
The charitable structure also provides legal protections. Trustees have fiduciary duties, assets are locked for educational use, and the Academies Financial Handbook imposes detailed requirements on financial management, related party transactions, and executive pay disclosure. The framework is designed to prevent private enrichment.
The case that something has gone wrong
Critics do not generally argue that MATs should not be charities in a technical sense. The concern is that the charitable form has become a shell around organisations that behave like corporations. TES investigations have repeatedly highlighted MAT chief executives earning over 250,000 pounds -- and in some cases over 400,000 pounds -- while teachers in their schools are paid on standard scales. The National Education Union has pointed to cases where trust boards include individuals with business connections to the trust's suppliers, and where related party transactions, though disclosed, raise questions about whether the charitable ethos is genuinely driving decisions.
The governance model is a particular flashpoint. In a maintained school, the governing body includes elected parent governors and is accountable to the local authority. In a MAT, the members (typically the trust's founders or their appointees) appoint the trustees, who in turn oversee the executive team. Local governing bodies exist but often have delegated rather than statutory powers. Parents and communities can feel they have no meaningful route to influence decisions about their children's school. When a MAT decides to change a school's uniform, merge year groups, or redeploy staff, the levers of local accountability are limited.
The journalist Warwick Mansell, who has covered academy governance for over a decade, has argued that the MAT model represents "a centralisation of power unprecedented in English education" -- one that sits uneasily with the community-rooted ethos traditionally associated with charity.
The structural tension
The deeper issue is that charity law was not designed for organisations of this kind. A charitable company running a single school, governed by local people with a direct stake in the school's success, maps comfortably onto the charitable model. A trust running seventy schools across five regions, led by a chief executive on a six-figure salary, with a central office handling HR, IT, procurement, and curriculum design, looks and feels like something else. It may be legally charitable, but the word "charity" does not capture what it is.
This is not necessarily a criticism of MATs themselves. It may be that large-scale educational infrastructure requires corporate management. The question is whether the charitable framework -- with its assumptions about voluntary governance, community rootedness, and modest remuneration -- is the right regulatory vehicle for that kind of organisation, or whether it creates a mismatch that serves nobody well.
The evidence
The scale of the MAT sector is well documented. The Department for Education's school census data shows that as of January 2025, 11,280 schools in England were academies, with the majority in multi-academy trusts. The Kreston Academies Benchmark Report 2024, covering more than 2,300 academy schools across almost 300 trusts, found that the largest MATs had annual revenues exceeding 300 million pounds.
On executive pay, the picture is clearer than it used to be but still imperfect. The ESFA's Academies Accounts Direction requires trusts to disclose the number of staff earning over 60,000 pounds in 10,000-pound bands. TES analysis of academy trust accounts published in February 2026 identified at least 12 MAT chief executives earning over 250,000 pounds, with the highest-paid exceeding 530,000 pounds. The ESFA has intervened on pay in a small number of cases, issuing Financial Notices to Improve where it judged remuneration to be excessive relative to the trust's size and performance. However, there is no formal cap, and the sector body the Confederation of School Trusts has argued that competitive salaries are necessary to attract leaders capable of running complex multi-site organisations.
Governance research paints a mixed picture. The National Governance Association's annual survey has consistently found that local governing bodies in MATs report lower confidence in their impact on strategic decisions than governors in maintained schools, with persistent gaps in communication between trust boards and local tiers. A 2023 report by the House of Commons Education Committee noted concerns about the "democratic deficit" in academy governance, while acknowledging that strong trust boards can provide more effective oversight than weak individual governing bodies.
On educational outcomes, the evidence is genuinely contested. Ofsted data shows a broadly similar distribution of inspection grades between academies and maintained schools, though sponsored academies (those converted from failing predecessor schools) show a clearer pattern of improvement. Research by the Education Policy Institute has found that the relationship between MAT membership and pupil outcomes is highly variable -- some trusts significantly outperform, others underperform, and the trust's name alone is a poor predictor of quality.
Current context
The Labour government elected in 2024 initially signalled a more cautious approach to academisation than its Conservative predecessors, but has not reversed the direction of travel. The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, introduced in December 2024 and enacted on 29 April 2026, strengthens local authority oversight of academies and gives the Secretary of State new powers to intervene in underperforming trusts, while retaining the MAT model as the default structure for state schools.
The ESFA has tightened its scrutiny of related party transactions in recent years, following several high-profile cases where trust leaders were found to have conflicts of interest. From September 2023, all related party transactions above 40,000 pounds require prior ESFA approval. The Confederation of School Trusts has published a voluntary governance code, and there is growing pressure from within the sector to professionalise trustee recruitment and improve pay transparency.
Meanwhile, the debate about MAT CEO pay continues to generate headlines. In February 2026, the Kreston UK Academies Benchmark Report found that the average CEO salary at trusts with more than 7,500 pupils had risen above 200,000 pounds for the first time, prompting renewed calls from the NEU and others for a formal pay framework linked to trust size and performance.
Last updated: June 2026
What this means for charities
The academy trust debate matters for the wider charity sector because it exposes a growing gap between the legal definition of charity and the organisational reality of large public service delivery. If a 300-million-pound educational corporation with a chief executive earning a quarter of a million pounds is a charity, the word is doing a lot of work.
This is not an argument for stripping MATs of charitable status. It is an argument for recognising that the charitable framework may need to evolve to accommodate organisations that bear little resemblance to the small, community-rooted bodies for which it was designed. The regulatory split -- with MATs answerable to the DfE rather than the Charity Commission -- already acknowledges this implicitly. The question is whether the sector and the public would be better served by a more explicit conversation about what charitable status means when applied at this scale.
For charity leaders in other sectors, the MAT experience offers a cautionary parallel. Any charity that grows to a scale where its governance structures, pay levels, and operational complexity start to resemble those of a commercial organisation should expect the same questions. The legal framework may permit it, but public legitimacy requires more than legal compliance.
Common questions
What is a multi-academy trust?
A multi-academy trust is a charitable company limited by guarantee that operates two or more academy schools. Each school within the trust is not a separate legal entity -- the trust holds the funding agreement with the Secretary of State and is responsible for all schools within it. MATs have a board of trustees (directors), a chief executive or equivalent, and typically local governing bodies for individual schools with delegated responsibilities. They are exempt charities regulated by the Department for Education.
Why are academy trusts exempt charities?
Academy trusts are exempt charities under Schedule 3 of the Charities Act 2011, meaning they are not registered with or directly regulated by the Charity Commission. Instead, the Secretary of State for Education acts as their principal regulator, with day-to-day oversight delegated to the ESFA. This reflects a policy judgement that educational institutions receiving public funding are better regulated by the education department than by the charity regulator -- though critics argue it creates weaker charitable oversight.
How are MAT trustees appointed?
MAT governance has a two-tier structure. Members (typically the trust's founders or their nominees) sit above the board and have the power to appoint and remove trustees. Trustees are the charity's directors and bear ultimate responsibility for the trust's management. Local governing bodies exist for individual schools but their powers are delegated by the trust board, not statutory. Parent representation varies between trusts -- some include elected parent governors at local level, others do not.
Are MAT CEO salaries too high?
This is one of the sharpest points of contention. TES analysis of published accounts identified at least 12 MAT chief executives earning over 250,000 pounds, with the highest-paid exceeding 530,000 pounds. The Kreston UK Academies Benchmark Report 2026 found that the average CEO salary at trusts with more than 7,500 pupils exceeded 200,000 pounds for the first time. The Confederation of School Trusts argues these salaries reflect the complexity of running large multi-site organisations. Critics, including the NEU, point out that headteachers in the same trusts earn a fraction of the CEO salary, and that the charitable sector norm of modest pay is being abandoned. The ESFA can challenge pay it considers unreasonable but there is no formal cap.
How does this differ from the independent schools debate?
The public benefit question is fundamentally different. Independent schools charge fees, so the question is whether they provide sufficient benefit to people who cannot pay. MATs provide free state education, so public benefit is inherent in their core activity. The concern with MATs is not about who benefits from the education, but about whether the charitable form is appropriate for the governance, scale, and executive culture of large trust organisations.
Key sources and further reading
Kreston Academies Benchmark Report 2024 -- Kreston UK, 2024. Financial benchmarking data covering more than 2,300 academy schools across almost 300 trusts, including analysis of trust size, revenue, and spending patterns.
Academy trust CEO pay analysis -- TES, February 2026. Analysis of executive pay across the academy trust sector, based on published accounts.
School governance in 2023 -- National Governance Association, 2023. Annual survey of governors and trustees, including comparative data on empowerment and influence in MATs versus maintained schools.
Multi-academy trusts: the accountability gap -- House of Commons Education Committee, 2023. Parliamentary committee report examining governance, transparency, and local accountability in the MAT sector.
Education Policy Institute: Multi-academy trust performance -- Education Policy Institute, various years. Research on the relationship between MAT membership and pupil outcomes, including analysis of trust-level variation.
Academies Financial Handbook (Academy Trust Handbook) -- Education and Skills Funding Agency, updated annually. The regulatory framework governing financial management, related party transactions, and pay disclosure in academy trusts.
Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 -- UK Parliament, enacted 29 April 2026. Legislation strengthening local authority oversight of academies and introducing new intervention powers.
Warwick Mansell, "Academies: Autonomy, Accountability and a New National Schools System" -- Various publications including The Guardian and Education Uncovered. Longstanding investigative reporting on academy governance and accountability.