Catholic Multi-academy Trusts: The Future of Catholic School Leadership or the Last Nail in Its Coffin?

Long-standing challenges to Catholic school leadershipCatholic school leadership are being added to by the rapid, and some would say rather chaotic, expansion of Catholic Multi-Academy TrustsCatholic Multi-Academy Trusts (CMATs). Head teachersHeadteachers play a pivotal role in ensuring that what Sergiovanni calls the ‘lifeworld’ of the school stays at the core and is not subsumed into the ‘systemworldSystemworld’ of organisational requirements. Maintaining the culture and ethos that comprises the lifeworld of a Catholic school is hard enough for the shrinking number of candidates willing and able to put themselves forward for Catholic headship, but this challenge multiplies in CMATs, particularly when the autonomy of the local head teacherHeadteachers and governing body is reduced. Does one of the ‘threats’ to Catholic education, threatsThreats to Catholic education often cited as a reason for CMATsCatholic Multi-Academy Trusts, lie ironically within the CMAT itself? Namely, the colonisation of the Catholic lifeworld by the systemworldSystemworld of governance, financial regulation and Ofsted accountability. Can dioceses provide effective and practical leadershipLeadership that preserves subsidiaritySubsidiarity, promotes the lifeworld and equips present and future school leaders with the formationFormation and autonomy essential to their leadership?