With over 58% of pupils now attending academies and the average multi-academy trust (MAT) growing year-on-year, trust leaders face big decisions about how to scale effectively while protecting what matters most: students’ daily school experience.
Through conversations with our MAT partners, CRB Cunninghams has created a new, best-practice guide to enhancing school meal services for multi-academy trusts. This free guide shows you how other MATs are using centralised cashless catering to maximise trust-wide savings, boost school meal uptake, and empower local schools to deliver excellent service for pupils and families.
Why MATs need a smarter approach to school meals
Multi-Academy Trusts foster collaboration between schools, raising education standards, and offering schools a more sustainable future through shared resources.
However, coordinating operations across diverse schools with different circumstances, facilities, and communities presents challenges, particularly in delivering consistent, high-quality school meal services.
Read on to learn how centralised cashless catering helps growing MATs tackle these operational challenges and enhance all schools’ meal services.
The rise of multi-academy trusts
England’s education system is evolving rapidly, with academies outnumbering local authority maintained schools for the first time in 2024/25, and now educating over 58% of all pupils in England. (DFE)
While government policy sparked the growth of academies, the appeal of joining a multi-academy trust, has undoubtedly contributed. From community support to shared best practices and pooled resources, MATs offer many benefits to individual schools.
This model’s success is self-evident, as 89% of academies are now part of a MAT, with more joining year-on-year. At the current rate, all English schools could be part of a MAT by 2041. (FFT Education Data Lab)
The benefits of expanding multi-academy trusts
The average MAT size increased from 6.25 schools in 2019 to 8.1 schools in 2023. As trusts grow, so do the advantages for schools.
The latest DFE academies sector annual report highlights the financial strength and sustainability that larger trusts offer:
“The tendency is that larger MATs are less likely to have a deficit and hold larger cumulative revenue surpluses. MATs can pool either income or reserves allowing for greater efficiencies in joint purchasing and economies of scale.“
The National Governance Association (NGA) identifies additional key benefits of larger trusts:
- Well-defined roles for trust and school-level governing boards improve compliance, accountability and efficiency, compared to smaller MATs
- Larger central teams contribute specialist skills while freeing school leaders to focus on school improvement
- Greater staff mobility and professional development opportunities benefit both staff and pupils
Staying ahead of this trend means making smart choices now about how to centralise services without losing what makes each school special, starting with school meals.
How can MATs grow, centralise, and still serve up great school mealtimes?
Managing multiple schools effectively, while honouring each one’s identity and needs, raises complex operational challenges for growing multi-academy trusts.
The NGA states:
“The challenge for trusts now is to both harness the opportunities of centralisation and deliver localised leadership to academies which accounts for their unique context.”
That’s why our guide to centralised cashless catering shows MAT leaders how to maximise the benefits of centralisation, while keeping every student’s mealtime experience at the heart.
How centralised cashless catering helps MATs grow
1. Cost savings
Centralisation enables MATs to benefit from economies of scale. Trusts can maximise school budgets by consolidating all cashless, online payments, ID management, and nutrition analysis systems into one seamless, cost-effective platform. Partnering with a single, trusted provider also streamlines operations by creating one point of contact for all services and offering scalability as trusts expand.
2. Operational efficiency
Empowering specialist trust teams to manage operations increases efficiency and allows school staff to focus on education and student well-being. Centrally configured permissions allow school business, finance, and catering staff to access systems and data required for their roles, while upholding security throughout the trust.
3. Practical insights
Multi-academy trust leaders can utilise trust-wide data to track performance and inform strategic changes. Real-time visibility of all schools’ payment and meal data can reveal sales trends, free school meal uptake, and financial performance. MAT teams can even use interactive reports to drill down to individual school, service location, or student records for a complete picture of school meal services.
4. Menu management
Centrally managing menus and pricing helps ensure pupils receive consistent service throughout the trust. Central teams can standardise or tailor menus and roll out menu updates to all schools with just a few clicks. This helps trusts to support school leaders and caterers in efficiently providing nutritious and tasty school meals to pupils.
5. Tailored cashless solutions for MATs
As most MATs consist of a combination of primary, secondary, special and alternative provision schools, a flexible range of integrated cashless catering tools helps to provide the best service for each school.
Fusion Cashless offers:
- all-in-one online payment system
- school meal pre-order app for parents or students
- classroom pre-ordering via smartboard, tablet or computer
- fast cashless transactions with a choice of secure recognition methods
- modern self-ordering and self-checkout technology
- integrated chip and PIN, contactless and mobile payments
– all while maintaining high standards across the trust.
Get the complete guide to cashless catering centralisation for MATs
Download your best-practice guide to see how effective trust-wide management can enhance the student experience, boost school meal uptake, and improve efficiency in your trust.
