Preparing for a New Era of Trust Accountability: How RM Compare Supports MAT Leaders Through Statutory Inspections

The education landscape for multi-academy trusts is about to change fundamentally. With the government confirming statutory inspections of academy trusts from as early as 2027, MAT leaders now face a critical question: Is your assessment strategy inspection-ready?​

At BETT 2026 next week, RM Assessment will be showcasing how the new RM Compare Companion App, combined with our established comparative judgement platform, gives MAT leaders a practical, evidence-based response to this new era of accountability.

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The Inspection Challenge: What MAT Leaders Need to Know

On 7 January 2026, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson tabled an amendment to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, delivering on the government's manifesto commitment to bring multi-academy trusts into the inspection system for the first time. This represents more than just another compliance requirement, it signals a fundamental shift in how trusts will be held accountable for the quality of education across their schools.

What Will Be Inspected

Ofsted will focus on three key areas when inspecting trusts:​

• Leadership and governance: How effectively trust boards and executive teams provide strategic direction and oversight
• Impact on school improvement: Evidence of how the trust improves schools, provides high-quality education, and supports staff
• Resource management and pupil wellbeing: How trusts use resources and promote the wellbeing of pupils across all their schools

Critically, inspections will examine "activities to secure the provision of a quality education" and "action taken by the trust to make improvements at its academies." This means inspectors will expect to see clear, trust-wide evidence that assessment practices are consistent, equitable, and demonstrably improving outcomes.

The Stakes Are High

The new legislation also introduces sweeping intervention powers. If Ofsted finds that trust leaders "are failing to lead, manage or govern" to an acceptable standard, the education secretary can serve a termination warning notice, potentially leading to the closure of the entire trust and the transfer of all its schools. As one sector leader noted, the key will be ensuring this is done proportionately, but the reality is that MATs must now demonstrate robust systems and clear evidence of impact

The Assessment Evidence Gap

Many MAT leaders face a significant challenge: how do you demonstrate trust-wide quality in assessment when much of the richest evidence of learning is difficult to capture digitally? Practical subjects, creative work, oracy, real-world applications, and classroom activities often remain "uncapturable" in traditional assessment systems.​

This gap becomes critical during inspections when MATs need to show:​

• Consistency across schools: That standards and expectations are clear and consistently applied
• Collaborative moderation: Evidence of shared professional judgement and quality assurance
• Impact and improvement: Clear audit trails showing how assessment informs teaching and raises outcomes
• Trust-wide oversight: Aggregated data that allows central teams and trustees to monitor quality

Without effective systems to capture and moderate diverse forms of evidence, MATs risk entering inspections with fragmented records, inconsistent standards, and limited ability to demonstrate the impact their central teams have on educational quality.

RM Compare: A Strategic Response for MAT Leaders

This is where RM Compare and the new Companion App offer a powerful solution. Together, they create what we call "the bridge between physical evidence and digital judgement", enabling MATs to capture previously uncapturable work and subject it to rigorous, collaborative professional judgement at scale.

The Three-Phase Workflow

Why This Matters for Inspections

RM Compare's architecture is specifically designed for the scale and complexity of multi-academy trusts:​

Trust-Wide Infrastructure: Our tenancy management system, licence centres, connectors, and data-sharing capabilities mean RM Compare can operate seamlessly across all schools in a trust, providing central oversight while respecting school-level autonomy.​

Robust Reporting: Trust leaders can generate reports that show assessment quality, consistency of standards, and improvement trajectories across their entire estate, exactly the kind of evidence inspectors will be looking for.​

Transparent Audit Trails: Every judgement, every comparison, and every decision is logged, creating a complete audit trail that demonstrates robust governance and quality assurance processes.​

Proven at Scale: RM Compare is already being used successfully by large multi-academy trusts for trust-wide moderation and assessment.

Real-World Impact: Case Studies That Build Confidence

The effectiveness of RM Compare is not theoretical—it is proven in demanding, high-stakes contexts that mirror the challenges MAT leaders face. See all our cases studies here.

E-ACT: Trust-Wide Art Assessment

In March 2024, art teachers from E-ACT, a large multi-academy trust spread geographically across the UK, used RM Compare to implement a trust-wide Key Stage 3 art assessment strategy. The pilot demonstrated how comparative judgement could standardise assessment of creative work across multiple schools, enabling collaborative moderation and shared professional development at trust level.

Oxfordshire Schools: Collaborative Moderation

Fourteen Oxfordshire schools pioneered a new method of collaborative assessment and moderation using RM Compare, demonstrating how the platform enables professional dialogue and shared understanding of standards across school groups.

Beyond Schools: High-Stakes Applications

RM Compare has also been used successfully in contexts where reliability and transparency are paramount:​

• The Cathedral Music Trust uses ACJ to assess grant applications worth approximately £500,000 annually, requiring robust, fair, and transparent decision-making that can withstand scrutiny.​
• NCFE deployed RM Compare to assess applications for their Assessment Innovation Fund and Aspiration Awards, delivering significant improvements in efficiency, reliability, and stakeholder engagement in critical evaluation processes.​
• The ISEB used adaptive comparative judgement to assess a new interdisciplinary qualification and facilitate a groundbreaking global creative writing competition, demonstrating the method's validity for complex, diverse assessment tasks.​

These case studies show that RM Compare is trusted in contexts where assessment must be defensible, transparent, and demonstrably fair, precisely the standards MATs will need to meet during inspections.

Addressing the CEO's Challenge: A Joined-Up Technology Strategy

The move to statutory trust inspections means technology strategy is no longer just about box-ticking. Inspectors will expect to see a clear, joined-up approach that demonstrates how technology enables trusts to make their work visible, support their teachers, and enrich the lives of their learners.

RM Compare, enhanced by the Companion App, directly addresses this challenge by:​​

• Making assessment work visible: Creating transparent, auditable records of professional judgement that can be shared with inspectors, trustees, and stakeholders
• Supporting teachers: Reducing marking workload while enabling collaborative professional development through shared moderation
• Enriching learning: Enabling assessment of the full breadth of the curriculum, including practical, creative, and real-world work that traditional tests cannot capture

This is precisely the kind of strategic, joined-up thinking that will distinguish high-performing trusts in the new inspection regime.

The Opportunity: From Compliance to Competitive Advantage

While statutory inspections represent a compliance challenge, they also create a strategic opportunity for forward-thinking MAT leaders. Trusts that invest now in robust, evidence-based assessment systems will not only be inspection-ready, they will gain genuine advantages including:​

Attracting and Retaining Schools: Schools will increasingly seek to join trusts that can demonstrate strong assessment leadership, collaborative moderation, and evidence-based improvement, all of which RM Compare enables.​

Building System Leadership: The new inspection framework explicitly recognises trusts that "play a wider system role by helping all children and schools across communities to succeed." RM Compare's collaborative model positions MATs as assessment leaders in their regions.​

Supporting Curriculum Breadth: At a time when curriculum narrowing is a concern, RM Compare enables trusts to credibly assess and celebrate the full breadth of learning, including creative, practical, and enrichment work.​​

Strengthening Governance: Trustees need clear, aggregated data to fulfil their oversight responsibilities. RM Compare's trust-level reporting provides boards with the insights they need to govern effectively and demonstrate impact.

See RM Compare at BETT 2026

If you're attending BETT next week (21-23 January at ExCeL London), this is your opportunity to see the RM Compare Companion App in action and explore how it can form part of your trust's inspection readiness strategy.​​

At our stand, we'll be offering:​

• Live demonstrations of the complete evidence journey, from mobile capture through comparative judgement to trust-level insights
• Consultation sessions with our assessment experts to discuss your specific MAT context and inspection preparation needs
• Case study discussions with trust leaders who have successfully implemented RM Compare at scale
• Free trial sign-up to be among the first to access the new mobile-first ecosystem when it officially launches later this week​

The theme of BETT 2026 is "learning without limits", and that is exactly what RM Compare enables: assessment without limits, capturing the full breadth of learning and making professional judgement accessible, reliable, and scalable across entire trusts.

Taking Action: Preparing Your Trust for Inspections

As you consider your trust's readiness for the new inspection regime, here are the key questions to ask:​

1. Can you demonstrate consistency? Do you have systems that enable trust-wide moderation and shared understanding of standards across all your schools?
2. Can you capture the breadth of learning? Are practical, creative, and real-world learning experiences being assessed and evidenced, or are they invisible in your data?
3. Can you show impact? Do you have clear audit trails showing how assessment informs improvement at both school and trust level?
4. Can you evidence your governance? Can you provide trustees and inspectors with aggregated, trust-level insights on assessment quality and outcomes?

If any of these questions give you pause, RM Compare and the new Companion App offer a proven, scalable solution that has already been tested in high-stakes contexts and adopted by leading trusts.

Conclusion: The Bridge to Trust-Level Excellence

The introduction of statutory MAT inspections marks a watershed moment for academy trusts. Success will depend not on reacting to compliance requirements, but on building robust systems that genuinely improve educational quality while creating the transparent, auditable evidence inspectors will expect to see.​

The RM Compare Companion App represents a strategic investment in this future. By bridging the gap between physical evidence and digital judgement, it enables MATs to:​

• Capture the full breadth of learning across practical, creative, and academic domains
• Apply rigorous, collaborative professional judgement at trust-wide scale
• Generate transparent audit trails and trust-level insights
• Reduce teacher workload while enhancing assessment quality
• Position themselves as assessment leaders in their regions

Inspectors will be looking for trusts with clear, joined-up technology strategies that demonstrate genuine impact on learners. RM Compare and the Companion App provide exactly that: a coherent, evidence-based approach that makes your trust's work visible, supports your staff, and ultimately improves outcomes for every child in your care.​​

Visit us at BETT 2026 next week to see how RM Compare can help your trust prepare for statutory inspections while building genuine assessment excellence.​​

The wait is almost over. The bridge between physical evidence and digital judgement officially opens later this week, and trust leaders who engage early will be best positioned to demonstrate their readiness when inspectors arrive.