Many Trusts are heading into the next planning cycle facing rising workforce costs, tightening reserves and increasingly difficult decisions around where to invest capacity. In this environment, clarity matters more than ever.
Benchmarking should support that clarity. Too often, it doesn’t. Instead of helping leaders make decisions, it becomes another set of comparisons that describe where you sit, without showing what you can do next.
In our recent Sector Insights webinar, Will Jordan and I explored what benchmarking needs to look like if it is to drive confident, practical decision making across multi-academy Trusts. The discussion was not about producing more data. It was about creating shared understanding from data that leaders can genuinely act on.
Why benchmarking often fails to drive change
Most Trusts already compare themselves with others at a high level. The difficulty comes when the structures underneath those comparisons do not align.
Roles are categorised differently between Trusts. Costs are allocated in different ways. Centralisation varies widely. Some Trusts pool funding. Others don’t. When definitions and structures differ this much, the benchmark itself becomes unreliable.
This challenge is compounded when data is fragmented across separate systems. Planning tools, HR platforms, purchasing workflows and payroll systems rarely sit together. Finance teams spend valuable time reconciling numbers before meaningful discussions can even begin. When benchmarking is detached from live Trust planning data, it becomes descriptive rather than strategic. It tells you what has happened, not what choices are available now.
What good benchmarking looks like
Effective benchmarking does not exist to justify past decisions or defend positions. It exists to ask better questions and create confidence about the future.
For benchmarking to be genuinely useful it needs to:
- Use consistent categories across Trusts and schools
- Connect directly to live planning models
- Surface insights at both Trust and school level
- Highlight not only differences but the drivers behind those differences
- Support collaborative conversations across leadership teams
It becomes meaningful only when everyone across the organisation is working from the same picture.
Where benchmarking changes real decisions
The impact of strong benchmarking is not theoretical. It shows up in the most practical choices Trusts are making every day.
Trust leaders are using insight to review workforce structures and ensure staffing remains safe and sustainable. They are examining how pastoral and inclusion provision is shaped across schools and the cost implications that follow. They are assessing where central services are generating the right value and where clarity is needed. They are interrogating curriculum delivery models across phases and clusters to understand the financial consequences of different approaches.
These are not abstract data conversations. They directly affect financial stability, staff wellbeing and pupil experience. They only work when they are underpinned by shared, trusted insight.
Integrating benchmarking into everyday planning
IMP has been purpose-built to connect budgeting, curriculum financial planning, purchasing workflows and finance operations into a single unified platform for MAT finance.
More than 550 Trusts across over 6,000 schools now plan, budget and forecast through IMP. That scale matters because it gives benchmarking a consistent data language that reflects how Trusts actually operate.
Rather than exporting figures into static templates, benchmarking becomes embedded into everyday planning activity. Leaders can explore comparisons dynamically, using real-time Trust data rather than snapshots from months or years ago.
Integration delivers practical benefits:
- No rekeying or manual reconciliation
- A single source of truth across staffing, planning and spend
- Leadership discussions grounded in shared, trusted information
When benchmarking connects directly to planning, it stops being a once-a-year compliance exercise and becomes an ongoing strategic tool.
Understanding the wider financial context
This year’s Sector Insight Report collected forward-looking data from 274 Trusts and more than 3,300 schools, representing over a 10 percent increase in participating schools compared with last year. Data quality has improved significantly through a systemised submission process supported by built-in validation checks.
The findings paint a concerning picture.
Last year, 33 percent of Trusts were projecting a deficit for the first year of their three-year budgets. This year that figure has risen to 55 percent. The majority of Trusts are now forecasting in-year deficits for 2025 to 2026.
Reserves compound the challenge. By the end of this year, nearly one third of Trusts will hold less than 5 percent reserves, which the Department for Education identifies as the threshold for financial vulnerability. By 2028, projections indicate that one in two Trusts will be below that level.
Importantly, analysis comparing last year’s forecasts with actual outcomes this year shows that projected difficulties are materialising. Financial risks are not disappearing as the years approach. They are becoming reality.
Size and deprivation offer little protection
Historically, smaller Trusts tended to carry higher reserves than larger organisations, reflecting the need for greater financial prudence. This difference remains today, with smaller Trusts starting around 9 percent reserves compared to 6 percent for larger Trusts.
However, over the three-year outlook, both size groups converge towards the 5 percent vulnerability threshold. By the end of the forecast period, the gap largely disappears. Once reserves fall to this level, strategic flexibility all but evaporates.
Similarly, while high-deprivation Trusts previously showed greater resilience than their low-deprivation counterparts, this protective effect is eroding. Nearly 70 percent of low-deprivation Trusts now forecast deficit budgets, but the differential between deprivation profiles continues to narrow as cost pressures intensify everywhere.
Staffing pressures in primary schools
Primary pupil numbers are projected to decline by approximately 1.5 percent nationally, a figure reflected across the IMP dataset. Teacher staffing numbers are reducing at a similar rate.
Teaching assistant numbers, however, tell a different story. TA full-time equivalent posts are being cut by almost 4 percent, nearly three times the rate of pupil decline. While staffing flexibility exists, these reductions raise real concerns given the rising complexity of pupil need across primary settings.
By contrast, finance and administrative staffing remains relatively unchanged, highlighting where the brunt of adjustment is currently falling.
Secondary schools have not yet experienced the same pressure. IMP data shows approximately 1 percent pupil growth against national projections of slight decline. This appears to be delaying the impact for secondaries, though the downward trend working its way through primaries is expected to reach them in coming years.
Funding variability undermines simple benchmarks
One of the clearest findings from the analysis is the extreme variation in pupil funding across the country.
Among the middle fifty percent of non-London primary schools, per-pupil GAG funding ranges from just over £5,000 to figures 20 percent higher. Similar variability exists in secondary funding. This disparity directly drives differences in staffing structures and class sizes.
Pupil-teacher ratios vary even more widely than funding levels, meaning that single benchmark ratios are blunt instruments at best. Resource models look fundamentally different depending on local funding conditions. Effective benchmarking must recognise this complexity rather than obscure it.
Rising staff costs beyond pay awards
Pay awards alone do not capture the true growth in staffing expenditure. While assumptions within Trust budgets averaged 4 percent increases in year one followed by 2 percent annually, incremental drift caused by progression up pay scales drives costs substantially higher over time.
This compounding effect occurs alongside changes in minimum wage thresholds, national insurance contributions and support staff pay pressures, which further reduce financial headroom. These structural staffing cost drivers receive far less attention than headline pay awards yet contribute materially to the challenges Trusts face.
A need for the next level of benchmarking
The scale and complexity of these pressures show why nearly every Trust is asking the same question.
How do we move from understanding the problem to identifying practical solutions?
This is where benchmarking must evolve from sector reporting into operational decision support. Understanding the national picture is important, but leaders need benchmarking that speaks directly to the financial reality inside their Trust.
In Part 2, I explore how Trusts are using IMP’s MAT and school-level benchmarking tools to turn insight into action, particularly around SEND pressures, resource allocation and operational efficiency.
Read Part 2: Turning Benchmarking Insight into Practical Solutions
