Across the education sector, financial pressure on Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) is intensifying.
For many CFOs and COOs the challenge is no longer simply about balancing budgets – it’s about protecting educational outcomes while navigating the challenge of rising costs, operational complexity, and growing compliance demands.
Against that backdrop, MAT leaders are increasingly asking an important question:
How can trusts reduce and streamline costs in major operational spend areas without negatively impacting schools, pupils, or staff?
Escalating financial pressures
Many MAT finance leaders tell us current funding levels simply do not keep pace with rising costs – particularly around teacher pay awards, pension and National Insurance contributions, inflation, and increasing demand for SEND support.
As a result, more Trusts are reporting in-year deficits and drawing on reserves to maintain frontline delivery. Concerns around long-term financial sustainability are becoming more widespread across the sector.
At the same time, finance teams face increasing uncertainty in budget planning. Key cost drivers are often confirmed after annual budgets have already been set, creating significant rework and making forecasting increasingly difficult.
Operational efficiency is a priority
Alongside financial pressures, MATs are also navigating wider operational challenges.
As trusts grow, many CFOs and COOs discuss the difficulty of integrating finance, payroll, procurement, catering, estates, and compliance systems across multiple schools – particularly where legacy systems differ from one setting to another. MAT leaders are under pressure to deliver economies of scale and consistent standards while ensuring schools still feel supported and fairly funded.
In this environment, operational efficiency is becoming increasingly strategic. Rather than focusing purely on cost-cutting, trusts are looking more closely at smarter procurement, supplier benchmarking, service standardisation, contract performance management and better use of estate resources.
The goal is clear: reduce unnecessary spend while maintaining – or improving – service delivery quality.
Turning attention to cleaning and catering
Large operational spend categories such as cleaning and catering often represent significant costs across a MAT estate, yet they are rarely benchmarked consistently.
Over time, service models can drift away from actual operational requirements. School buildings evolve, estates expand, timetables change, and pupil numbers fluctuate – but cleaning specifications and staffing models may remain largely unchanged for years.
This can create hidden inefficiencies that are difficult to identify without specialist benchmarking. Importantly, addressing this does not mean reducing standards. In fact, many Trusts are discovering that by improving productivity, standardising specifications, and introducing clearer performance visibility, they can reduce costs while maintaining high-quality service provision.
Cleaning is one of the largest non-teaching operational expenses for many trusts – and one of the areas where productivity can vary significantly between schools.
Following the pandemic, many schools understandably increased cleaning hours and frequencies. However, in some cases, enhanced provisions have remained in place long after operational requirements changed. Recent assessments carried out by Litmus Partnership have identified between 400 and 800 excess cleaning hours per week across some school estates.
For MATs operating across multiple sites, the financial impact can be substantial.
Understanding the current provision
Often Trusts lack the benchmarking data needed to understand whether their cleaning provision is genuinely aligned to estate size, occupancy, and operational need.
To help schools and Trusts better understand their current provision, we’ve developed a new Cleaning Productivity Assessment Calculator – a free, practical tool designed to provide an immediate sense-check of cleaning efficiency.
By entering a few simple details – including estimated estate size and weekly cleaning hours – schools can quickly assess whether their current provision aligns with expected productivity benchmarks.
The calculator helps MAT leaders start important operational conversations:
- Is our cleaning provision truly fit-for-purpose?
- Are staffing levels proportionate to estate requirements?
- Are there opportunities to improve productivity without reducing standards?
- Are cleaning models consistent across our Trust?
- Could operational savings be redirected into teaching and learning priorities?
The most resilient Trusts are increasingly those taking a proactive approach to operational optimisation – using benchmarking, procurement expertise, and productivity analysis to identify smarter ways of working.
That does not mean compromising quality. It means ensuring every operational pound spent is delivering maximum value to schools, staff, and pupils.
For MAT finance and operations leaders facing difficult decisions, understanding where hidden inefficiencies exist may be one of the most effective ways to protect frontline education delivery for the long term.
To understand where hidden inefficiencies may exist in your school or Trust and to explore whether the cleaning provision is fit-for-purpose, find out more about our new Cleaning Productivity Assessment Calculator here.
The Litmus team
