Yorkshire and the Humber has been at the forefront of the academies programme since its inception.

It had one of the first city academies in the country to open in 2005, has one of the highest proportions of academies in the country and has also seen the growth of some of the largest and most high-profile turnaround trusts.

Now, with a new government in place and legislation set to change the way the academy landscape operates, some believe the region is at the forefront of a debate about how trusts should be run and what excellence in education should look like.

This excellence is not currently reflected in attainment measures: Yorkshire and the Humber places sixth out of nine regions on Progress 8, while the average Attainment 8 score was the second lowest of England’s nine regions.

However, some leaders feel this does not accurately reflect the work of schools and trusts in the region.

Schools ‘not getting credit’

“I think one of the biggest issues is that when looking at the performance tables, Yorkshire and the Humber schools will be judged as being one of the lowest-performing regions in the country,” says Jonny Uttley, chief executive of The Education Alliance, which runs 12 schools in Hull and the East Riding.

But, he says, the metrics take too little account of the context in which these schools operate.

He points to the work of the University of Bristol and the Northern Powerhouse Partnership through the Fairer School Index, which shows that Northern schools - including those in Yorkshire and the Humber - perform more strongly when context measures are added to progress scores.

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Uttley - who is also an elected member of the Department for Education’s regional advisory board, responsible for challenging and advising regional directors on academy decisions - believes the DfE’s existing performance tables have driven a policy problem for Yorkshire’s education system.

“It has led people to think ‘here is an area where there is large underperformance’, and it means that the schools are not getting credit for the work they are doing and for doing better than the current performance tables allow them to show,” he says.

‘Narrow shadow’ of success

Uttley believes that this, in turn, has led to some trusts in the region pursuing what the education secretary Bridget Phillipson is now describing as a “narrow shadow” of success.

However, he says it is important to acknowledge that some of these trusts were also taking on failing schools in the most disadvantaged areas.

In a recent speech to the Confederation of School Trusts, Ms Phillipson said that performance measures had incentivised schools in a “chase for a narrow shadow of excellence - the kind that only succeeds by pushing problems on to others”, and added: “That ends now.” The government has also indicated that inclusion is to be a major focus of its school reforms.

Uttley believes this clear indication from the DfE means the Yorkshire and the Humber region is now “very fertile ground in the ongoing debate about what excellence in education should look like and how it should be defined”.

The need for cultural change

Wellspring Academy Trust CEO Mark Wilson, who is also an elected member of the DfE’s regional advisory board, takes a similar view. Wellspring runs 33 schools comprising special, alternative provision and mainstream academies, with the majority located in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

Commenting on the region’s academy landscape, he says: “The excesses pursued as policy by some in the name of school improvement under the previous government - that were variously championed or judiciously ignored - really did simply push problems on to others”.

He wants to see a significant cultural change in the sector under Labour, towards partnership and away from competition.

In the past, the Yorkshire and Humber region has seen controversy around off-rolling concerns and approaches to behaviour being used by trusts.

As a region, it had the second highest suspension rate (6.32) in the country, behind the North East, in the latest data for the autumn term of 2023-24.

It also had the joint-third highest exclusion rate (0.06), along with the West Midlands and South West.

‘Poverty is the enemy’

Across Yorkshire and the Humber, schools face a diverse range of challenges.

The region comprises eight cities, has areas of high deprivation, large urban conurbations in the West and South, and large swathes of rural areas in North Yorkshire and the East Riding along with around 100 miles of coastline.

As Luke Sparkes, a trust leader at Dixons Academies Trust, says, the region is “juggling coastal, rural and urban deprivation”. “Poverty is the real enemy here,” he adds.

Sparkes continues: “Child poverty is not spread evenly. Funding needs to be better targeted to support the most complex schools. For example, at Dixons, we subsidise child poverty at a level of roughly £1.5 million a year.”

Dixons runs clusters of schools in the cities of Bradford and Leeds and was formed from the first academy in the region - Dixons City Academy, in Bradford - which converted to academy status in 2005, having previously been a city technology college launched in the 1990s.

Coastal challenge

But poverty is also a challenge along parts of the Yorkshire coastline. When the government launched its Opportunity Areas programme aimed at locations facing “entrenched deprivation”, one of the areas chosen was the North Yorkshire coast.

Trust leaders warn that schools in these communities also face challenges fuelled by their remoteness, including recruiting teachers and a lack of nearby support.

Uttley adds: “You can tend to think of the Yorkshire region in terms of its cities and big urban areas, but there are also challenges around rural and coastal isolation in parts of the county.”

This geography can make it more difficult for schools to look at managed moves for a pupil. If the nearest school is 20 or more miles away, then it would be in a large urban area, he highlights.

Paul Tarn, CEO of Delta Academies Trust, the largest multi-academy trust in the region, was previously headteacher of a school in Scarborough on the North Yorkshire coast.

“There are unique challenges facing deprived coastal communities - but good education provision is absolutely achievable,” he says. 

“When young people leave these coastal towns to go to universities, they tend to stay away for better employment opportunities. That’s a problem for a graduate profession like teaching.”

Strategic solutions needed

However, he adds that there is huge talent in Yorkshire’s coastal schools and communities, and he believes an apprenticeship into teaching can be a solution for teacher recruitment in coastal communities.

Delta has committed to building a teacher training and CPD centre for the East Coast, which Tarn said will “share our resources, staff and systems to help transform education on the coast”.  

The MAT has just been given approval by ministers to take on six coastal schools in Yorkshire previously run by the Coast and Vale Learning Trust.

In a joint statement, John Riby, chair of Coast and Vale, and Steve Hodsman, chair of Delta, said: “Challenges for coastal regions like Scarborough, the Vale of Pickering and other East Coast communities require a wider strategic solution.”

Significant numbers of maintained schools

A feature of some of the region’s authorities with rural and coastal communities is a significant number of maintained schools.

However, the majority of state schools in Yorkshire and the Humber are now in MATs.

DfE data shows there are 1,253 schools run by 143 MATs in the region, and another 51 single-academy trust schools. 

There are 930 authority-maintained schools across the 15 Yorkshire and the Humber education authority areas.  

Yorkshire and the Humber had the highest proportion of academies in the North and the third highest of the nine regions in the country, according to DfE regional data for the 2023-24 academic year.

But there are major differences in how widespread academisation has happened across Yorkshire and the Humber, with some local authority areas now only having a handful of maintained schools left, while others have more than 100.

In Hull, for example, there are just four maintained schools and only two mainstream left in the city, according to the latest DfE data for maintained schools.

But in the neighbouring East Riding, which is largely rural, there are 104. North Yorkshire has 184 maintained schools, while Leeds, the largest city in the region, has 163.  

Small trusts, small schools

Another feature of the schools landscape in Yorkshire - highlighted by some leaders as a challenge - is the number of smaller academy trusts.

Rowena Hackwood, chief executive of Astrea Academy Trust - which runs 26 primary academies in South Yorkshire and Cambridgeshire - says: “There are many small trusts in our region and lots of trusts serving very rural areas with very small schools.”

These are “critical parts of the local infrastructure but lack financial viability under current funding models”, she says, adding that this is similar to other parts of the country such as the North East and the South West.

Around a third of MATs operating in Yorkshire have five or fewer schools, analysis by Tes finds.

Trusts ‘can’t contemplate letting go’

Warren Carratt, the chief executive of Nexus Multi Academy Trust, which runs 17 academies - predominantly special schools in Yorkshire - agrees there is a “high volume of small trusts in our region”.

One of the “key problems” in the way in which the MAT system has evolved, he says, is that “trusts have defined their unique selling points to such an extent that they can’t now see beyond them or contemplate letting them go”.

He tells Tes that more trusts in Yorkshire and the Humber would benefit from joining with others, but said “elective mergers aren’t happening because there is no real effort to instigate that change, and because trust boards are too precious about their USP”.

An ad hoc ‘end’ system

In 2023, the government produced a series of plans setting out what academy growth and movement the DfE wanted to see in the country’s 55 Education Investment Areas - parts of the country seen as underperforming.

These trust development statements said the DfE would welcome proposals for mergers to help consolidate the system in three of the regions’ EIAs: Doncaster, Leeds and Wakefield.

Hackwood, who is also a member of the DfE’s regional advisory board for Yorkshire and the Humber, adds: “We are still in the situation where decision making about the system sits at the most local point within the system, which is either local governance and/or local leadership.

“This inevitably leads to the bottom-up emergence of a system or structure that risks lacking coherence when viewed from the top downwards.”

While this might be great from the perspective of local choice and accountability, “it can risk creating an ‘end’ system that feels ad hoc, and may lack capacity and design”, she warns.

Most councils on SEND deficit support programmes

Other stresses on the system highlighted by school leaders in the region are, unsurprisingly, funding and cost pressures.

Carratt points out that many councils in Yorkshire and the Humber are involved in government intervention programmes because of the scale of their high-needs deficits.

Almost two-thirds of the 15 LEAs are either on the Safety Valve programme (Barnsley, Kirklees, Rotherham and York) or the DfE’s Delivering Better Value programme (Doncaster, East Riding, Hull, North East Lincolnshire and North Yorkshire.) 

Carratt warns that both programmes are resulting in a “squeeze in funding to state schools and embed the absence of long-term planning”.

And he says this has a knock-on effect of increasing the short- and medium-term pressure on schools, and creating risks for trusts taking those schools on.  

“This is a challenge across both mainstream and special provision, as it perpetuates a system having to react to emergent demand rather than there being a coherent sufficiency strategy in place,” he says.

Ms Hackwood also points to the concerns about school and trust finances. She highlights public figures suggesting that 75 per cent of trusts had a deficit budget in 2023-24.

“Clearly, if trusts are already eating into their reserves and then are taking on schools with financial, pupil number or academic challenges, we may be storing up even greater problems for the future.”

Future focus of trusts

Leaders of some of the most high-profile trusts in the region have voiced their belief in the role of MATs to continue driving the system.

Lee Wilson is the chief executive of Outwood Grange Academies Trust, which runs 40 schools across Yorkshire and the Humber and the North West.

He says trusts like OGAT are ”uniquely positioned to address current challenges by leveraging their scale”. Outwood had “demonstrably raised aspirations, improved outcomes and achieved Ofsted recognition for this progress, successfully working across both primary and secondary sectors”, he says.

Further improving outcomes and provision will require “truly harnessing the power of community through place-based leadership, working in deep partnership with families, local authorities and wider services”, he adds.

Impact of the Schools Bill

Sparkes tells Tes that school leaders need the autonomy to be innovative in order to tackle educational and social disadvantage. “This is what has enabled Dixons to deliver outstanding results for disadvantaged students and turn around failing schools,” he says.

While he feels this government recognises the importance of autonomy, he voices a concern that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill currently before Parliament leaves the door open for future administrations to interpret the law as an opportunity to control and limit. “The concern is how we safeguard the conditions for innovation and, therefore, the best interests of children, and enshrine that in law,” he says.

And leaders point to another challenge facing trusts in Yorkshire and the Humber flowing from the new legislation.

The DfE has already stopped using powers to academise coasting schools rated less than “good” twice by Ofsted, and is legislating to remove the automatic academisation of schools rated “causing concern”.

One of the challenges this creates for trusts, says Uttley, is that they are going to have to “do more to win over schools and their communities in order to ensure that they want to join a trust” as there will be fewer being directed to do so.

“The route for trusts to be able to grow is going to change,” he points out.

Find our interactive map of England’s multi-academy trusts by clicking here, where you will also find links to all of our MAT Tracker content

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