Trust mergers and transfers are becoming an increasingly common part of the academy trust landscape. In CJK’s 2026 Mergers and Transfers research, nearly half of respondents had been through a merger or transfer, compared with 35% in the previous year. This growing level of activity means more boards and executive teams are having to make complex decisions around partnership, growth and integration. For trust leaders, the ability to plan and lead change effectively is becomin

Growth and merger can create significant opportunities for school trusts, but they also bring important decisions about how services should be organised and delivered. Following the merger of two trusts, Excalibur Academies Trust faced a challenge familiar to many growing organisations: how to create a single operating model from two successful, but very different, approaches. One legacy trust operated through a highly decentralised model, while the other had embraced shared

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Across the sector, shared services have become the default operating model for trusts. But while many trusts have centralised functions such as finance, HR, estates and IT, leaders increasingly want to be confident that their shared services are genuinely adding strategic value , not just simply keeping the organisation running. At CJK, we increasingly see trusts asking a different question: " How do we shift from managing problems to enabling performance?" This is the challe