Dixons Academies Trust is planning significant growth across three northern cities to increase its number of students to 20,000 in the next 12 months.
Its latest published for the year ending August 2024 show that the cross-phase trust is planning to increase the number of schools it runs in hubs in Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester.
The trust currently has around 14,000 students across 17 schools and a college.
The accounts also show that Dixons had an operating deficit of around £800,000 last year after spending half a million pounds reforming its business services.
Dixons Academies Trust expansion plan
Dixons opened a new free school, Dixons Newall Green Academy, in Wythenshawe, Manchester, in September 2023.
The trust’s accounts show it had approval to open two more free schools in Manchester in two to four years’ time.
One of these plans, for a sixth-form free school, is still going ahead, but another approval to open a secondary is being reviewed as part of a wider Department for Education move to review mainstream free school projects.
The trust’s accounts say that it is working on these projects and is also continuing to work with the DfE’s Regions Group “to explore other opportunities on both sides of the Pennines”.
The plans come amid warnings from the sector that cuts to DfE grants will curb trust growth.
Luke Sparkes, Dixons Academies Trust’s school and college leader, said: ”Our priority is always to ensure consistently high standards across our schools and college. However, we also have a moral imperative to grow and enable more students to benefit from a Dixons education. And growing responsibly can help to build greater resilience across our trust.”
He told Tes that Dixons had needed a period of consolidation after taking on four “inadequate”-rated schools in less than two years.
“Now that they are making strong progress through our academy transformation model, we are working on new growth opportunities; over the next 12 months we hope to expand to provide an education to 20,000 students across the North,” Mr Sparkes added.
He also said that, looking more widely across the sector, mergers would be key to trust growth.
Dixons Academies Trust has grown from Dixons City Academy, in Bradford, which was one of the country’s first city academies in the mid 2000s, having first opened as a city technology college at the beginning of the 1990s.
Over the past five years the trust has more than doubled in size. It has around 1,800 staff.
Dixons has 11 secondaries, three primaries, two all-through academies and a sixth-form academy.
The trust’s 2023-24 accounts say that it ran “an underlying operating deficit of £801,000”. It said this was before £729,000 was transferred to capital for a trust IT project, which will equip the trust’s schools and central function with the “right technology”.
The deficit is said to be largely driven by an investment of just over £500,000 on “business service transformation” to improve the efficiency of its central function.
The academy trust says the investment will bring savings of £3.4 million over a five-year project period.
In a statement, Dixons said it had “looked inside and beyond the education sector to create a meaningfully different, meaningfully better model” to running its business services.
It added: “The changes we are making to business services ensure that every demand for service is logged, target dates set and our performance on delivering to this commitment is measured and reported.”
Trust reserves
At the end of August the trust’s total reserves were £6.341 million - down from £7.871 million in the year ending August 2023.
As a percentage of total income, this amounts to 5.62 per cent - above the 5 per cent threshold set out by the DfE.
says that trusts have flexibility to decide the appropriate level of reserves they hold. However, it reviews academy trusts’ reserve levels and can engage with trusts with reserve ratios below 5 per cent.
The accounts highlight that seven of Dixons’ academies are rated as “outstanding” by Ofsted, including a former sponsored academy that was previously rated as being “inadequate” with special measures.
The trust’s accounts also say that its strategic plan includes working on a series of “big moves”, which it describes as “breakout opportunities that are hard to reverse”.
Its “big move” areas include its business service transformation; standards; attendance; joy; reading; transformation through coaching, implementation and teaching; and its multi-disciplinary teams and SEND.
To keep up to date with all the latest decisions affecting the multi-academy trust sector, visit Tes’ MAT Tracker - where you will also find an interactive map showing key information on trusts across the country
