19th May 2026

Dear colleagues, families and local governors,

We are writing to you jointly, openly and with excitement to invite your views on a proposal that we are considering.

Inspiring Primaries Academy Trust (‘IPAT’) and Learn Academies Trust (‘LAT’) are opening a consultation on proposals to merge, forming a larger, stronger, more resilient multi-academy trust (‘MAT’) and, as our most important stakeholders, we would like to gather and understand your views and have the opportunity to consider and address any questions and concerns.

The consultation will run from Tuesday 19 May until Tuesday 23 June. Trustees at both trusts will then consider all of the feedback and review their intentions to proceed with the merger. Respective Trust Board decisions will be shared with you before we break for the summer holiday. If both Trust Boards decide to continue with the proposal, the merger then depends upon our obtaining consents from both the Leicester Diocese Board of Education (‘DBE’) and the Department for Education (‘DfE’).

IPAT and LAT are both proudly Leicester diocesan trusts and we are firmly committed to the Church of England Vision for Education, which strives for human flourishing and embraces the spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional, moral and social development of children as well as excellence and academic rigour. IPAT and LAT have consulted with the DBE on the proposed merger and the DBE is both excited by, and supportive of, the proposal in principle. The DBE is keen to be appraised of feedback gathered during this consultation process before a final decision is taken.

Background and context

The Trustees at both Trusts have been considering how we might further grow our respective families of schools to extend the impact of our work to date. The reasons behind our ambition to grow are two-fold: firstly, we recognise that a larger organisation will have greater capacity to deliver the very best learning experiences for our children and professional development opportunities for our teachers and support staff, thus continuing to improve our schools; and, secondly, we want to be able to contribute further to the education system and support more children, families and communities to achieve success and flourish in Leicestershire.

We have been engaged in preliminary conversations for some months, supported by independent advice and guidance, exploring the possibility of our two successful and well-established trusts joining together to create a larger organisation, building on the strengths of the two trusts and creating a single trust that will be greater than the sum of its parts. We are open to the idea of a new name and identity to capture this ambition for what would be our collective family of 28 primary schools in Leicestershire (LAT currently has 19 primary schools, including one school with a specialist Communication & Interaction Unit, with c. 3,700 pupils on roll and LAT also operates its own Institute of Education; and IPAT has 9 schools with c. 1,400 pupils on roll. Each trust has a mix of both Church and community schools).

Looking ahead

IPAT and LAT have much in common: our shared Christian vision and values, our primary-only specialism, our commitment to putting children and young people first, our ambitious strategic plans and setting high standards (with equity and inclusion being at the heart of all of our work), our aspiration to deliver exceptional learning experiences for all of our children and exceptional career development opportunities for all our staff, and our desire to connect with and support the communities we serve.

Our initial phase of due diligence has informed us that our trusts share strong cultural, strategic and operational alignment and we have all the hallmarks of being an excellent match. Provided the consultation process is successful, we will continue to complete all the necessary due diligence processes for a smooth legal transfer into one entity. In terms of legal process, it is proposed that IPAT would transfer into LAT (LAT being the larger, more complex entity), but, in practical terms, the single organisation created would very much be a partnership of equals.

The proposal is not only a strategic move for both trusts but also an aligned response to national policy encouraging MAT consolidation with strong regional coherence to leverage greater economies of scale, optimise school improvement at scale and strengthen the education sector now and for the future.

Staff and schools

We are clear that, if we merge, each school will retain its unique identity whilst benefiting from increased staff collaboration, shared professional support services and broader expertise as a member of one larger trust. Upon merger, schools would continue to operate as they do now under current school leadership, supported by a combined central school improvement team and a wider body of professional support staff. Our staff teams are central to our respective success; they are highly valued and will be fully supported throughout the proposed merger process, keeping any risk of redundancy which may arise to an absolute minimum. It is envisaged at this early stage that the merger would carry a risk of a very small number of redundancies as a result of some necessary restructuring to create an effective and efficient, combined trust central team, but no risk to school-based teams at either trust. If the proposed merger is to proceed, there would be a separate Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) consultation next term. TYPE protects employees’ rights when their employment transfers to a new employer and under this proposal, IPAT employees would transfer into the employment of LAT. For the vast majority of our c.900 colleagues across both trusts, the merger opens up a great number of exciting opportunities for professional growth, career progression and innovation, ensuring strong retention and development
of our excellent teachers and support staff and the very best start in academic learning and personal development for our young people.

Children

Children attending our 28 schools will not notice any immediate difference following the proposed merger. They will continue to attend the same school in the same uniform and have the same teaching staff and pastoral support. Over time, our wider pool of expert teachers and school improvement leaders across the larger organisation would regularly come together as we continue to strive to provide an excellent education and create additional, enriching early life experiences for over 5,000 children. We want every one of our children to get off to the best start and move on to their secondary education with solid academic foundations and a firm sense of ambition, optimism, purpose and pride in who they are becoming.

Governance

Should we proceed to merge, the two Boards of Trustees would come together to form a single board with all current trustees at each trust welcome to continue in office. Each school would continue to have a local governing body (as required by DBE and strongly encouraged by DfE). Currently IPAT have ‘Local Governing Committees’ and LAT have ‘Local Trust Committees’ which is a slight difference in name, but importantly, the schemes of delegation and terms of reference for our LGBs are very similar, which is unsurprising given all of the recent national guidance on ensuring important local governance is suitably modernised and focused and impactful in each of the school communities it serves. Both trusts remain firmly committed to enabling and supporting strong local governance.

Finance

In terms of finance, we will continue to receive the same amount of funding per pupil from DfE as we do currently. However, through increasing the size of the trust by the proposed merger, we will be able to achieve greater economies of scale, which ultimately means a greater level of funding can be directed to support teaching and learning. Further, LAT is large enough that it receives an annual School Condition Allocation from DfE, currently worth c. £750k pa. IPAT currently does not benefit from this annual award. By merging to create one, larger trust, we estimate that we would receive approximately £1m pa to invest in capital improvement projects across all of our schools.

Timescale

At this stage, and subject to the outcome of this consultation and securing DBE and DfE final consents, we would envisage the merger taking effect between November 2026 and January 2027.

Consultation process

As set out above, this consultation will remain open until Tuesday 23 June. The aim of this stakeholder engagement process is to ensure that all stakeholders are able to consider the merger proposals, raise questions and have the opportunity to give their views. Trustees and executives at both trusts will actively continue to consider all feedback and we will create and update a ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ document setting out common questions and the trusts’ responses as we continue through the process.

Yours sincerely,

Graham Read                                                                                                Amanda Callear
Chair of Trustees at IPAT                                                                        Chair of Trustees at LAT