Why Every MAT Needs a Culture Strategy (and Not Just an Improvement Plan)

In the current educational landscape, Multi-Academy Trusts face increasing pressure to secure rapid improvement, demonstrate robust governance, and deliver consistently strong outcomes across diverse school contexts. Most MATs respond to this challenge through structured improvement plans, performance frameworks and data-driven accountability cycles. But there is a growing recognition at trust level that improvement alone is not enough.

Improvement plans can raise standards. Culture strategies sustain them.

And in a system characterised by complexity, workforce pressures and heightened public scrutiny, the MATs that excel are those that invest as much in how people behave, think and collaborate as they do in dashboards, KPIs and interventions.

1. Improvement Plans Drive Action. Culture Strategies Drive Alignment.

Improvement plans are essential. They clarify priorities, set milestones and allocate resources. But they do not define the conditions in which those priorities can thrive.

A strong culture strategy answers questions no improvement plan can address:

How do we lead across differences while maintaining alignment?
What are the non-negotiable behaviours and professional norms we expect in every school?
How do we create psychological safety for leaders to surface risks early?
What does “the MAT way” look and feel like in everyday practice?

Without a culture strategy, each school interprets improvement differently.
With one, the trust creates coherence, consistency and clarity — at every level.

2. Culture determines the success of leadership, not the other way around

MATs often focus heavily on leadership capability: CPD programmes, leadership pathways, NPQs and performance management. But capability without culture leads to fragmentation.

Leadership thrives when:

# Trust is high
# Expectations are clear
# Communication is open
# Challenge is safe
# Collaboration is modelled, not mandated

Culture is the multiplier effect of leadership behaviours across the system.
A trust may have outstanding leaders, but if the culture is inconsistent, those leaders will spend more time managing resistance than delivering impact.

The most successful MATs are intentional about the leadership behaviours they promote and the cultural norms they protect.

3. Staff retention Is a cultural outcome, not a recruitment issue

The education workforce crisis is not simply about supply; it is about conditions.
Research consistently shows that people do not leave organisations — they leave cultures that do not support them.
A MAT-level culture strategy directly influences:

teacher retention leadership sustainability wellbeing and workload clarity quality of professional dialogue trust-school relationships the calibre of leaders the trust attracts

A strong culture acts as an internal retention mechanism. A poor culture accelerates attrition, regardless of incentives.

MATs that embed positive cultural conditions across their schools reduce the need for constant recruitment firefighting.

4. Culture Creates the Conditions for Ethical, High-Integrity Governance

Good governance is not only about compliance, scrutiny or financial oversight. It is also about how decisions are made, how information flows and how people behave when no one is watching.

A culture strategy strengthens governance by:

promoting transparency and upward challenge building maturity in risk reporting developing trust-wide expectations for communication protecting the integrity of safeguarding and inclusion practices ensuring consistency in how leaders interpret trust directives

When culture is strong, governance becomes proactive, not reactive, because leaders feel safe to escalate concerns early.

5. Improvement Without Culture Leads to “Technical Wins, Human Losses”

A MAT can implement the most sophisticated improvement cycle — RAG ratings, deep dives, diagnostics, executive coaching — and still experience limited gains if the underlying culture is unaligned or unclear.

The signs of culture–improvement misalignment include:

superficial compliance rather than genuine engagement pockets of excellence with weak system spread fluctuating morale across schools leaders delivering to avoid scrutiny rather than drive progress improvement conversations that feel transactional rather than developmental.

Culture is what allows improvement to become embedded, replicable and sustainable.

6. The MATs that thrive are the MATs that are culturally deliberate

High-performing trusts design culture as intentionally as they design their improvement architecture.

They define:

# the trust’s leadership behaviours
# shared pedagogical principles
# expectations for collaboration and accountability
# how success is celebrated
# what “dignity and respect” look like in practice
# the emotional climate they want in every school
# Culture is no longer treated as an abstract concept. It becomes a strategic asset.

7. What a MAT-Level Culture Strategy Should Include

A robust trust-wide culture strategy typically contains:

1. A clear articulation of the trust’s purpose and values
Not just statements — behaviours that can be seen, heard and measured.

2. Leadership behavioural frameworks
Defining what high-quality leadership looks like across every tier.

3. Cultural non-negotiables
The standards all schools must uphold to ensure coherence.

4. Professional dialogue expectations
How we talk, challenge, coach and collaborate.

5. Mechanisms for cultural intelligence
Pulse checks, listening groups, feedback loops, and cultural diagnostics.

6. Investment in people development
Coaching, mentoring, and leadership pathways aligned to trust values.

7. A strategic alignment plan
How culture connects to improvement, governance, well-being and outcomes.

Final Thought: Culture Is the Strategy

Improvement plans change performance. Culture changes people.
And in a people-led sector, culture is the ultimate differentiator.

MATs that invest in culture do not just improve their schools — they create systems where people can perform at their best, consistently and sustainably.

A culture strategy is not an optional extra. For modern MAT leadership, it is the foundation on which every improvement plan stands.