The benefits of working as a multi-academy trust are now well documented in terms of sharing expertise and services and optimising opportunities available through economies of scale. Membership of JMAT will give academies access to a range of support and services, to enable school leaders to primarily focus on providing high standards of education for the pupils in our Trust. In order to achieve this, we intend to use our freedom as a multi-academy trust to amalgamate a proportion of GAG funding to form one central fund. This creates a number of benefits for the Trust including, but not limited to the following:

• Use of surplus GAG funds for individual academies with an emergency funding commitment to help alleviate financial pressures in individual academies and therefore iron out periods of fluctuating income and expenditure
• Culturally, pooling GAG in a move from ‘my school’ to ‘all pupils in the MAT’
• Enable resources to be directed to the areas in most need across the Trust to ensure that all pupils within our Trust are provided with the best possible education and pastoral support
• Create opportunities for real savings by maximising efficiencies around procurement

Our support includes the following:

• School improvement
• Governance
• Finance, payroll and pension administration
• Human Resources
• Estates management
• ICT support
• Curriculum development, data and exams 
• Marketing and community engagement