Strategic clarity for Multi-Academy Trusts.
Board-level thinking for trust leaders across Greater Manchester — from IT spend reviews to governance, commercial strategy and employer partnerships. The business mind your education mission deserves.
Multi-Academy Trusts are, increasingly, complex businesses — multi-million pound budgets, dozens of suppliers, central teams, and growth ambitions — held to account on outcomes for children. Most trust leaders are brilliant educators. Few have time to be commercial strategists too.
That's where we come in. As a fractional consultant or non-executive director, we bring 15+ years of running a successful Greater Manchester business — and over a decade supplying the education sector — to help trusts spend smarter, govern better, and grow with confidence. We're not generic consultants reading from a deck; our team includes school governors and long-standing education partners who understand both the classroom and the balance sheet.
People · Partnerships · Progress
Built on conversations and connections
Good consultancy begins by listening. Our approach values relationships, practical experience and understanding the communities and organisations we support.
Images from professional and community occasions. People pictured are not presented as clients or endorsers of Imagine Consultants.
Five ways we create value for a MAT
IT & Digital Spend Analysis
Trusts routinely overspend on technology — duplicated licences, auto-renewing contracts, inconsistent procurement across schools. We audit your whole IT estate and supplier base, benchmark it, and identify savings that go straight back into teaching.
Governance & Non-Exec Support
As an experienced governor, we strengthen boards and trust committees — sharpening the questions, improving risk oversight, and bringing genuine commercial challenge to leadership.
Commercial & Income Strategy
From lettings to shared services to trading subsidiaries — we help trusts build sustainable income streams beyond the core grant, with realistic plans not wishful thinking.
Employer & Skills Partnerships
We connect schools and trusts with the Greater Manchester employer base — apprenticeships, work experience, careers education, and the kind of business links that Ofsted and students both value.
Growth & Trust Expansion
Considering taking on a new school, merging, or restructuring central services? we bring an experienced commercial eye to due diligence, integration and operating-model design.
Social Value & Funding
We help trusts articulate and measure social value — strengthening funding bids and demonstrating community impact to stakeholders and inspectors alike.
Analysing IT spend across a Multi-Academy Trust
An illustration of how a typical fractional engagement unfolds — turning a vague sense of "we spend too much on IT" into hard savings.
"Is our IT spend under control across 8 schools?"
A trust of eight schools, each historically buying its own IT — broadband, devices, cloud licences, support contracts, MIS, e-safety filtering. No central visibility. Total spend unknown but "definitely too high."
We'd gather every IT-related contract and invoice across all schools, build a single spend register, and map it against pupil numbers and need. Then benchmark unit costs against the wider market and flag duplication, auto-renewals, and over-provisioned licences.
Three schools paying three different prices for the same software. Licences for staff who've left. Support contracts renewing automatically above market rate. Broadband circuits over-specified for actual use. Devices replaced on no clear cycle.
A prioritised savings plan — consolidate procurement, renegotiate at trust scale, align renewal dates, and put a simple governance process around future IT spend. Savings of 15–30% on technology budgets are common, redirected straight into the classroom — plus a board that finally has visibility.
Building an employer-partnership programme
A secondary academy wants stronger careers provision and real employer links, but the team has no capacity to build relationships from scratch.
Drawing on our Greater Manchester business network, we'd broker introductions to local employers across construction, digital, healthcare and manufacturing — structuring a programme of workplace visits, careers talks and apprenticeship pathways.
A sustainable employer-engagement programme that strengthens the careers offer, supports the Gatsby Benchmarks, and gives students genuine exposure to local opportunity — exactly the brokerage model Oldham's own BREE initiative is built on.
An education partner who speaks business
Serving school governors
Our team includes serving school governors — so we understand accountability, Ofsted, safeguarding culture and the realities of school leadership from the inside.
A decade in education IT
Our consultants have delivered IT and digital services to schools across Greater Manchester for over a decade. We know where the money goes.
Genuine local network
Strong ties to the local economy board, the employer base and civic leadership mean we can open doors that benefit your trust and your students.
Mission-aligned
We grew up in one of Oldham's most deprived areas. Supporting young people isn't just a service line for us — it's central to why we do this work.
Lead a trust? Let's find your quick wins.
A short, no-obligation conversation is the best place to start. Tell us where the pressure is — IT spend, governance, growth, partnerships — and we'll tell you honestly whether and how we can help.
Specialist multi-academy trust consultancy
Explore six focused services covering finance, estates, IT, AI, governance and income generation.
DfE standards and compliance knowledge
Explore the official guidance behind our MAT services, specialist audit questions and independent assessment tools.
Explore the DfE knowledge hub →Education & MAT consultancy — frequently asked questions
What education consultancy services do you offer?
Support for schools and multi-academy trusts across IT and digital strategy, DfE digital standards, cyber security and compliance, technology spend reviews, and safe AI adoption — plus leadership and operational advice.
Do you work with single schools or only trusts?
Both. We support individual schools and whole multi-academy trusts, and we're used to the realities of trust-wide standardisation, central teams and school-level needs.
What are the DfE digital and technology standards?
A set of government 'you should' standards covering broadband, networks, wi-fi, cyber security, cloud, filtering and monitoring, and devices. They're the baseline inspectors, trustees and insurers increasingly expect — and we help schools audit and meet them.
Can you help us meet the filtering and monitoring standards?
Yes. We help you assign clear responsibility, understand and test what your systems actually block and log, and document an annual review — the things leaders are now expected to evidence.
How much does education consultancy cost?
It's scoped to the work — a one-off audit, a project, or ongoing fractional support. We give a fixed, agreed price after an initial conversation, and a technology spend review often pays for itself.
Is it safe to use AI in our school?
It can be, with the right guardrails — a clear acceptable-use policy, approved tools, and no pupil personal data going into public AI tools. We help schools adopt AI safely, starting with teacher productivity where the risk is lowest.
Can you review our IT spend across the trust?
Yes. A technology spend review pulls every licence, contract and supplier into one view, and almost always finds duplication and overspend that can be redirected to the classroom.
Do you replace our existing IT support company?
No — we work alongside them. We provide the IT leadership layer most schools lack, and can hold your existing provider to account on value, independently.
Are you familiar with Cyber Essentials for schools?
Yes. We help schools work towards Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus, and fix the underlying basics — patching, multi-factor authentication, access control and tested backups.
How quickly can you help?
After an initial call we can usually begin an audit or project within a couple of weeks, and ongoing fractional support flexes around your term and budget.
Do you understand the governance and safeguarding side, not just the technology?
Yes. Technology in schools is a safeguarding, financial and governance issue as much as a technical one, and we advise with that whole picture in mind.