Academy Trust Websites for UK Multi Academy Trusts
A multi academy trust website isn’t one website. It is the trust site plus every academy site, one identity across all of them, and publishing duties that sit at two levels at once. We have been building academy trust websites in the UK for over 20 years, with central control where the trust needs it and local freedom everywhere else.
Priced for the whole trust, with tailored discounts and packages.
What trusts tell us about running websites at scale
Most providers sell a trust the same product they sell a single school, multiplied by the number of academies. Nearly every problem a trust has with its websites comes back to that.
Fifteen sites, not one estate
What trusts tell usSeparate websites on separate contracts, drifting apart in branding and falling behind on publishing at different rates.
How we workOne connected estate on one platform, so the central team can see the state of every academy site in one place instead of checking fifteen.
All or nothing control
What trusts tell usEither every school ends up looking identical, or the trust has no control over anything at all.
How we workYou decide what stays fixed. Trust branding and the pages that have to match stay consistent, and each academy keeps its own character, photography and news.
Priced school by school
What trusts tell usFull retail per school, so growing the trust costs more every time and each conversion means another negotiation.
How we workTrust wide packages and tailored discounts for bringing the whole group on board, with a clear rate for schools joining later.
Multi academy trust websites we have designed
Live academy trust websites we built, from a brand new trust starting with a blank canvas to estates where we have built the trust site and its academies together.
Search Education Trust
Search Education Trust wanted their website to lift the whole brand rather than just describe it, and we helped them bring that vision to life. Animation carries visitors through the trust’s story, which is ambitious for a trust site and works well here.
NPCAT
A large scale trust project and a dream client. Two successful template iterations across the estate and a lot of bespoke work since. That only stays possible if the platform can keep changing without a rebuild each time.
Newham Community Learning
Our track record with three of the trust’s schools made it a natural choice to extend the partnership to all seven, plus the trust site. A good example of a trust moving onto one platform school by school rather than all at once.
Laurel Education Trust
The Laurel Education Trust is a brand new trust and needed its very first website. A blank canvas to work with, which was an exciting prospect. An elegant colour scheme and a clean, impactful design gave the trust an identity to build on.
Publish once instead of fifteen times
The biggest cost in running a trust’s websites is repetition. A safeguarding policy gets updated centrally, then somebody has to upload it to fifteen separate sites, and three of them never get done.
On a Realsmart estate the trust publishes once and it appears on every academy site that should carry it. The same goes for trust wide news, statutory documents and branding changes. The work stops growing every time you take on another school.
The publishing duties that only trusts have
Academy trusts publish at two levels, and the trust level duties are the ones most often missed, because they don’t exist for a maintained school at all.
Funding agreements. Memorandum and articles of association. The audited annual report and accounts, due by 31 January. Executive pay. Whistleblowing procedures. Gender pay gap reporting where the trust employs 250 or more people. Admission arrangements by 15 March and the pupil premium strategy by 31 December. We give each of those a permanent, properly labelled home on the trust site, and the academy level requirements on every school site underneath it.
One trust identity, and room for every school
Trusts get pulled in two directions. The trust needs a brand that means something to a school thinking about joining. Each academy needs to still feel like itself to the families who chose it.
So we design a trust system rather than a trust template. Shared structure, typography and components, with each academy free to use its own colours, photography, news and character. A parent can tell which trust a school belongs to without the school feeling like a branch of something.
Built for a trust that is still growing
Trusts take on schools, merge with other trusts and sometimes rebrand completely. A website estate that can’t absorb that gets in the way of growth.
Adding an academy to a Realsmart estate is a known process rather than a fresh procurement. We have handled trust mergers, rolled unified themes out across newly joined schools and migrated whole estates. We also build MIS sync and Google Workspace tools for trusts, so the websites can line up with the systems your central team already runs.
More academy trust websites by Realsmart
Further multi academy trust websites we have designed and built.
You don’t have to move every school at once
Most trusts don’t. Contracts expire at different times and a phased move is usually less disruptive, so we plan around your dates rather than asking you to work around ours.
Start with the trust site
Plenty of trusts begin with the trust website and a couple of schools, then bring the rest across as their contracts come up for renewal.
Or start with the schools
Newham Community Learning had three schools with us before we extended to all seven and the trust site. Either direction works.
Phasing costs nothing extra
Schools joining later come in on the same terms. There is no penalty for moving in stages and no renegotiation each time.
Trusts we have built websites for
Realsmart recently supported our Trust in the redesign of 4 school websites and a Trust website. I found the team to be enormously patient in supporting me to achieve what we wanted with the sites, and highly responsive to queries, it seemed that nothing was too much trouble. It also felt like the team had a real appreciation for our budget constraints, I am convinced that working with them delivered excellent value for money for both the schools and for the Trust. I would highly recommend them as a partner.
We have worked with Realsmart for over ten years and are currently working with the web development team to refresh all of our school websites. I could not recommend the team enough. They are friendly and approachable and at the same time very skilled and extremely professional with their work. Their customer service is exemplary and second to none and they completely understand the school sector and what is important to schools.
One trust price, every academy in it
Trusts get quoted per school at retail, then billed again every time an academy needs a change. Here is what a Realsmart trust subscription covers across the whole estate.
- Trust website and academy websites, designed and built
- Hosting for every site on AWS with Cloudflare
- Free, unlimited support for the central team and every school
- Ongoing training across every school
- Every feature we build, now and in future
- Security and CMS updates, applied by us
- A design refresh every three years
- Content migration from your existing websites
What we don’t charge extra for
- Adding a page, section or template at any school
- Rolling a trust wide policy or branding change across the estate
- Getting your own content back if you leave
- Support tickets, from any school, however many
Academy trust website FAQs
What must an academy trust publish on its website?
Trusts publish at two levels. At trust level that means funding agreements, memorandum and articles of association, the audited annual report and accounts by 31 January, executive pay, whistleblowing procedures, and gender pay gap data where the trust employs 250 or more people. At academy level it means admission arrangements by 15 March, the pupil premium strategy by 31 December, the SEN information report, the careers provider access statement, the complaints procedure, the RSE policy, PE and sport premium, and public sector equality duty information.
Can the trust control branding across every academy website?
Yes, and you decide how tightly. Trust branding, shared components and the pages that have to match can be fixed centrally, while each academy keeps control of its own colours, photography, news and character. It is a design system rather than a single template.
Can we publish a policy to every school at once?
Yes. Publish once at trust level and it appears on every academy site that should carry it. For most trusts this is the biggest single time saving, because the central team stops uploading the same document fifteen times and stops chasing the schools that didn’t.
How does pricing work for a multi academy trust?
Trusts are priced for the whole group rather than school by school, with tailored discounts for bringing the trust on board and a clear rate for academies joining later. Support, training, features, updates and the three yearly design refresh apply across every site. Tell us how many schools you have and we will give you a figure.
What happens when a new school joins the trust?
Adding an academy is a known process rather than a new procurement. The school gets the trust’s design system, its own site and its own editors, and joins on the same terms as the rest. We have also handled trust mergers and full estate migrations, including unifying themes across newly joined schools.
Can each school still edit its own website?
Yes. Permissions are set per person, so a school’s office team edits its own site, a head of department can be limited to one area, and the central team keeps oversight of everything. Training is included across every school in the trust.
Do we have to move every school at once?
No, and most trusts don’t. Newham Community Learning had three schools with us before extending to all seven and the trust site. Moving in phases as contracts expire is usually less disruptive and costs nothing extra.
Do you work with trust systems as well as websites?
Yes. We build MIS sync, Google Workspace and Microsoft Entra tools for multi academy trusts, so your websites can line up with the identity and data systems your central team already runs. You can read about our MIS sync for trusts.
More on school websites
Guides and advice for multi academy trusts running a website estate.
14 essential features for MAT website management
What trust central teams tell us they need from their websites.
Hit with hidden charges from your website provider?
What to check in a quote so you don’t get billed later for things you assumed were included.
Advice for changing school website provider
How to plan a move, and what to sort out before your contract ends.
See what your trust’s websites could look like
Book a free demo. We will walk you through a live trust estate, show you how central publishing and local editing work together, and give you a straight answer on cost for the number of schools you have.