Academies are now a central part of the English schools system
At January 2026, 48.2% of all schools in England were academies or free schools and they educated 60.4% of pupils. The shift is even more pronounced in secondary education, where 83.9% of schools were academies or free schools. For suppliers, that means understanding the Trust structure behind a school is increasingly essential.
The original version of this article asked whether the rise of Academies would continue. We now have a fairly clear answer: yes — but the more interesting story is what has happened to the structure around them.
Academies began as a relatively small part of the system. Today they sit at the centre of how education is governed and bought across much of England, particularly through Multi-Academy Trusts.
What exactly is an academy?
An academy is a state-funded school in England that operates independently of local-authority control. Funding comes primarily from central government through the academy trust rather than through the local authority in the same way as a maintained school.
The school still delivers publicly funded education and remains subject to national accountability and inspection, but its governance sits within an academy trust.
An academy is not simply a maintained school with a different label. The legal employer, accountable body and purchasing structure may sit with the academy trust — particularly where several schools belong to the same MAT.
How far has academisation gone?
of schools in England were academies or free schools at January 2026.
of pupils were attending an academy or free school.
of secondary schools were academies or free schools.
The primary sector is now much closer to an even split: 48.8% of primary schools were academies or free schools in January 2026, accounting for 49.9% of primary pupils.
Special schools have also moved further into the academy model, with 53.1% of state-funded special schools recorded as academies or free schools.
The headline therefore hides an important point: academisation has not happened evenly across phases. In secondary education it is overwhelmingly established; in primary education the system remains much more mixed.
What is a Multi-Academy Trust?
A Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) is one academy trust responsible for two or more academies.
Legally, the trust is the charitable company. Its board of trustees is accountable for the academies within it. Individual schools still have headteachers, leadership teams and local identities, but the degree of autonomy delegated to each school can vary significantly.
One MAT may centralise finance, procurement, HR, IT, estates and marketing almost completely. Another may leave considerably more authority with individual schools.
That variation is one of the reasons school targeting based solely on school-level contacts can now be misleading.
Where does the buying decision sit?
| Requirement | Decision may sit at... | What suppliers should check |
|---|---|---|
| Classroom or curriculum resources | School, department or trust | Whether curriculum decisions are delegated or standardised across the MAT. |
| IT infrastructure / cyber security | Often trust-wide in larger MATs | Whether the trust operates central IT, common platforms or group-wide contracts. |
| Finance systems | Trust finance function | The central finance leadership and whether systems are mandated across academies. |
| HR / payroll | Trust or shared-service function | Who employs staff and where workforce systems are managed. |
| Estates / facilities | School, regional cluster or trust | Whether contracts are site-specific, regionalised or consolidated across the estate. |
| Cleaning / catering | Varies considerably | Whether procurement is local, bundled across several academies or run centrally. |
The practical lesson is simple: the school name alone does not tell you where authority sits.
Why MATs changed the market for suppliers
Before academisation, suppliers could often think in relatively simple terms: individual schools plus the local authority around them.
That model is now incomplete.
A large MAT can represent a substantial estate, workforce and combined purchasing requirement across many schools and several local-authority areas. It can create central roles that simply did not exist when those schools were independently maintained.
That changes both opportunity and risk.
- A trust-wide win can open access to several schools at once.
- A trust-wide incumbent can close several schools at once.
- A school-level conversation may not reach the person who owns the budget.
- A MAT restructure can change who controls procurement without the school itself changing name.
- A new school joining a trust can inherit suppliers, platforms and policies from the group.
Why parent-child relationships matter in the data
This is one of the most important structural relationships Oscar tracks in the education market.
A supplier needs to be able to move in both directions:
- from a school to the academy trust responsible for it;
- from a MAT to the full set of schools within the group;
- from a central trust role to the academies it influences;
- from a local school contact to the trust-level finance, procurement, IT or estates function above it.
Without those links, a list of schools is just a list of buildings. With them, it becomes an organisational market.
One MAT may contain many schools but operate one central contract. Another may contain the same number of schools while delegating most purchasing. Counting establishments therefore does not necessarily tell you how many buying organisations exist.
Not every academy belongs to a large MAT
The academy landscape includes single-academy trusts as well as multi-academy trusts, and MATs themselves vary enormously in scale and operating model.
Some trusts consist of a small local family of schools. Others operate across multiple local-authority areas and manage large central teams.
That means “target MATs” is still too broad a strategy on its own. Suppliers may need to segment trusts by number of schools, pupil numbers, geography, phase, growth, estate, procurement model or relevant leadership structure.
What happened to the role of local authorities?
Academies sit outside direct local-authority control, but that does not mean councils disappeared from education.
Local authorities retain important responsibilities including areas such as admissions coordination, SEND, safeguarding responsibilities, school place planning and support for maintained schools.
The result is not a clean replacement of one system by another. It is a mixed system in which local authorities, academy trusts, individual schools and central government all retain different responsibilities.
Academies have changed the organisational language too
The rise of MATs has produced a much richer set of central professional-service roles: Chief Executives, Chief Operating Officers, Finance Directors, Directors of Education, Trust IT leads, Estates Directors, HR leaders and Procurement professionals.
These roles can carry responsibility across multiple schools, making them disproportionately important for suppliers whose services are capable of being deployed trust-wide.
Again, title alone is not enough. One trust may use “Director of Operations”; another may distribute the same responsibilities across Finance, Estates and IT. Functional classification becomes especially valuable in this kind of market.
The pupil population is now expected to fall
Department for Education projections show falling pupil numbers ahead: the state-funded secondary population is projected to fall from around 3.216 million in 2026 to 2.967 million in 2031, while primary numbers are also projected to decline. That puts a different pressure on schools and trusts: estate planning, staffing, budgets and growth strategies may increasingly be shaped by contraction rather than expansion alone.
Why this matters commercially
For suppliers, the academy market is no longer just a question of “how many schools are there?”
More useful questions are:
- Which schools belong to which trust?
- Which trusts are growing or consolidating?
- Where are finance, IT, estates, HR and procurement centralised?
- Which academies retain delegated authority?
- Which MATs span several local-authority areas?
- Which contracts are trust-wide rather than school-specific?
- Who are the senior decision-makers at trust and school level?
That is the difference between targeting educational establishments and understanding the education market.
How Oscar approaches Schools and MATs
Oscar's Schools database links schools to their parent councils, academy trusts and wider organisational relationships, alongside senior postholders and functional decision-makers.
That structure lets users work from either direction: start with all schools in an area and understand the trusts behind them, or start with a MAT and identify the schools, leaders and central functions within it.
For market analysis, Oscar's Schools Report can also be used to interrogate the sector by school type, parent organisation, size, geography and academy status.