1 - 2 October 2026, The Apex City of Bath Hotel, Bath
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Registration Desk60 mins
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Main Room10 mins
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Main Room60 mins
- Strategy & Leadership
- Outcomes & Impact
SEND provision is one of the most complex and high-risk challenges facing senior leaders in MATs. Rising numbers of pupils with SEND, delays in EHCPs, and limited local authority capacity mean trusts increasingly need to design inclusive systems from the outset. Government policy signals a shift towards mainstream inclusion, supported by substantial investment, yet school leaders remain concerned about funding sustainability and clarity over future SEND provision. This keynote panel will explore what true inclusion looks like in practice and how trust-wide cultural and systematic shifts can be achieved. What does mainstream inclusion look like beyond rhetoric, for example: in staffing, curriculum, environment, and leadership culture? How can trusts embed inclusion across leadership, teacher development, and workforce planning amid training and workload pressures? How can trusts maintain high outcomes while expanding inclusion? What frameworks or partnerships can enable this? How should leaders balance funding realities with the ethical imperative to provide equitable education for all learners?
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Main Room20 mins
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Main Room40 mins
Our signature ‘Dragons’ Den’ session provides each solution provider with an opportunity to deliver a 60 second pitch, explaining why they are here and how their services can help tackle some of the sector’s ongoing challenges.
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Networking and business meetingsNetworking Area75 mins
15 minute meetings with suppliers who are offering solutions most relevant to your challenges. Please check the schedule on the back of your delegate pass for your meeting timings.
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Main Room20 mins
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Main Room30 mins
- Strategy & Leadership
Collaboration between MATs remains aspirational in many areas, particularly in secondary education, where competition and growth strategies create tension. This session unpacks the challenges of partnerships, trust mergers, and inclusion coordination, exploring how to balance cooperative approaches with market realities. Leaders will share practical solutions, highlighting where regional cooperation succeeds and where it fails. When does collaboration add value for MATs, and when does competition or growth strategy get in the way?
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Breakout Room 130 mins
- Outcomes & Impact
Recent research highlights low engagement and attainment among disadvantaged pupils, particularly white, male working-class students. As trusts grapple with rising expectations and equity goals, building a strong sense of belonging and reducing disengagement are central to improving outcomes. This session will focus on strategies that foster belonging, reduce disengagement, and embed equity across schools. Leaders will share actionable examples of interventions that improve outcomes while maintaining high expectations.
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Breakout Room 230 mins
- Strategy & Leadership
- Workforce, Skills & Culture
Developing a diverse and representative leadership pipeline is central to sustainable MAT growth, especially for trusts serving varied communities. Yet systematic barriers persist in recruitment, retention, and progression. Delegates will learn how trusts are nurturing inclusive leadership, overcoming systemic bias, and ensuring succession pathways reflect the communities they serve. Participants will hear practical examples of workforce planning and culture change from leaders actively transforming their trusts.
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Breakout Room 330 mins
- Strategy & Leadership
- Finance & Sustainability
MAT boards are facing increasing pressure to move beyond compliance and exercise confidence and strategic clarity. Trustees must navigate the balance of guiding vision, holding executives accountable, and safeguarding public resources, while maintaining operational focus. Yet, blurred boundaries, uneven capability, and increasing complexity around finance, SEND and risk continue to challenge many trusts, particularly during merger, growth or crisis. This session will explore how modern governance can unlock strategic value, strengthen executive leadership and build board capacity for the future.
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Networking lunchDownstairs40 mins
An opportunity to connect with your peers and suppliers to talk over the learnings from the event. Lunch is served buffet style and a range of options are available to cater for different dietary requirements.
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Main Room20 mins
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Main Room30 mins
- Strategy & Leadership
These roundtable discussions give trust leaders the chance to share real-world challenges and solutions with peers facing similar issues. Delegates will submit topics ahead of the event, which will then be used to shape each roundtable around pre-defined themes with guiding questions. Attendees will choose the table most relevant to their priorities and engage in peer-to-peer conversations on approaches, lessons learned, and strategies to apply going forward. CEOs and senior leaders will conclude by distilling the insights into an Action Manifesto: a practical set of commitments to guide leadership and decision-making over the year ahead.
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Main Room20 mins
Main room and breakout room presentations
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Main Room30 mins
Main room and breakout room presentations
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Networking and business meetingsNetworking Area60 mins
15 minute meetings with suppliers who are offering solutions most relevant to your challenges. Please check the schedule on the back of your delegate pass for your meeting timings.
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Main Room40 mins
- Strategy & Leadership
- Operations & Service Delivery
As regulatory frameworks evolve, trust leaders face heightened scrutiny at trust and school level. The new Ofsted inspection approach, alongside increasing intervention and regional variation, is prompting concerns that more schools may fall below expected standards and that recovery will become a defining leadership challenge. Leaders must prepare for sustained improvement journeys and manage stretched internal capacity. This honest discussion will examine how MATs can navigate the shifting accountability landscape and respond decisively when inspections do not go to plan.
- How can leaders secure support and maintain morale during periods of intense pressure?
- What strategies help build productive relationships with Ofsted and regional teams?
- What does effective post-inspection recovery look like, and how can improvement plans be sustained?
- Who supports the trust when capacity is stretched
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Main Room5 mins
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70 mins
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Drinks reception and networking dinnerDownstairs150 mins
Networking sessions – throughout the event we host a networking lunch as well as a dinner and drinks reception to give you ample opportunity to connect with your peers and suppliers over the learnings from the event. Dinner is served in formal-style seating to a set menu. Our delegate team will speak to you to ensure we cater for any specific dietary requirements.
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Main Room5 mins
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Main Room40 mins
- Strategy & Leadership
- Finance & Sustainability
The government's proposed reforms represent one of the most significant changes to school funding in a generation. As funding shifts from EHCP-led top-ups towards mainstream budgets to support earlier intervention and inclusion, MATs will need to adapt their financial planning, commissioning arrangements, and SEND provision. Alongside changes to the National Funding Formula and deprivation funding, trusts face a complex transition period before reforms are fully implemented. This session will explore how leaders can manage risk, plan for greater accountability, and position their organisations to deliver sustainable and inclusive provision in a changing funding landscape.
- How should trusts adapt financial planning for the new funding model and what are the key risks during the transition period?
- How can MATs make effective use of pooled funding and local commissioning arrangements?
- What opportunities exist to develop Inclusion Bases and specialist provision?
- How might changes to deprivation funding affect trust strategy and resource allocation?
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Main Room20 mins
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Main Room40 mins
- Strategy & Leadership
- Workforce, Skills & Culture
Executive leadership stability is becoming a critical governance risk for MATs. Rising turnover among CEOs, COOs, and CFOs and inconsistent succession pipelines are prompting boards to ask difficult questions about organisational resilience: “What happens if a key executive can’t continue tomorrow?”. With a limited talent pool and competition for leaders who combine educational and commercial expertise, succession planning is no longer a procedural exercise but a strategic priority. As trusts scale and founder CEOs transition, building internal pipelines and strengthening board oversight will be a defining issue for 2026 and beyond.
- Developing future executives, not only headteachers
- Managing interim dependence and unplanned exits
- Preventing burnout and building resilience at the top
- The board’s role in executive sustainability and succession planning
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Main Room20 mins
Main room and breakout room presentations
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Networking and business meetingsNetworking Area60 mins
15 minute meetings with suppliers who are offering solutions most relevant to your challenges. Please check the schedule on the back of your delegate pass for your meeting timings.
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Main Room30 mins
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Main Room40 mins
- Strategy & Leadership
- Outcomes & Impact
As major curriculum and assessment reforms take shape, trusts face decisions about autonomy and the role of curriculum in driving standards, inclusion, and community confidence. How can trusts develop a strategy that balances consistency with school autonomy, strengthens curriculum leadership as a trust-wide function, and ensure curriculum decisions reflect community needs and values? Leaders will discuss using curriculum as a lever to improve outcomes while building trust and engagement across their communities.
- What constitutes a strong MAT‑level curriculum strategy that balances coherence with school autonomy?
- How should trusts organise curriculum leadership as a trust‑wide function?
- How can curriculum be aligned with community needs and values to build trust and engagement?
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Main Room5 mins
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Networking lunchDownstairs50 mins
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