School leaders have been offered a glimpse of how the government鈥檚 new approach to academies will work, with officials deploying 鈥渟oft levers鈥 to encourage small schools to convert and build capacity in the system. But Baroness Barran, the academies minister, this week insisted a planned shake-up of school commissioning would not equate to 鈥渁 kind of algorithm that sends people to the top or the bottom鈥. As part of the academies commissioning review, the government pledged to introduce a new, 鈥渕ore transparent鈥 system of decision-making over school sponsorship, conversion and trust mergers. Barran said this week she wants an approach that is 鈥渁s transparent as possible鈥 because what we鈥檝e heard from all of you was it felt like it was at best a black box, and at worst a kind of list of the friends of the regional director鈥. The government has published new quality descriptors for trusts, which will be used to help to inform commissioning decisions. But Barran said these were to make sure the government was 鈥渁lways objective鈥, adding: 鈥淚n no place in the framework does achieving a quantitative metric mean, you know, pass [go], earn 拢200, get a new school.鈥 ‘Our role is about leadership’ Last year, the government reorganised its team of regional schools commissioners into regional directors. They . Ministers want to see all schools in multi-academy trusts, but do not plan to force well-performing schools over the line. Hannah Woodhouse Instead, regional directors and their teams will coax maintained schools into trusts and encourage mergers of smaller trusts and standalone academies. Hannah Woodhouse, the DfE鈥檚 regional director for the south west, told a panel discussion the directors only had 鈥渧ery limited formal levers鈥, and could not force mergers of schools or trusts that were performing well. 鈥淥ur role is about leadership, convening, soft power as it were, to be leading those conversations on the ground.鈥 Andrew Warren, who oversees the West Midlands, admitted there was 鈥渁 lot of pushing, shoving, enabling, facilitating discussions鈥. 鈥淲e’re not dating agencies. We’re not going to set things up. But we are a lot of talking on the ground about how we can make this work.鈥 Part of the government鈥檚 academisation strategy involves targeting faith schools, thousands of which remain in the maintained sector. Crunch talks over future of village schools Warren acknowledged village schools were 鈥渋mportant鈥 to their communities and faced viability problems. He said directors talked 鈥渓ots and lots with our dioceses about what their plans are鈥. 鈥淎gain, we have to use our soft levers. Where a headteacher is retiring, it鈥檚 having the opportunity to discuss with the diocese, 鈥榮o is this the time to bring a few of those [schools] together to safeguard that, so that we have one overall leader for two, three, four, five schools? 鈥淚f you want that village school staying open, what’s the viable plan? It鈥檚 having some difficult conversations with chairs of governors and groups about 鈥榠f you want this to stay, it will mean x, y and z鈥.鈥 However, Woodhouse said it was 鈥渨orth saying we have got some outstanding trusts doing incredible work with large groups of very small schools鈥. 鈥淚 think they鈥檙e keeping them open actually. Otherwise, we may well see schools struggling with financial viability and leadership capacity.鈥 Realising ministers鈥 ambitions for academisation would spell the end of single-academy trusts (SATs). There are about 1,000 in England. Woodhouse said they were 鈥渟till seeing a number of single academy trusts continuing to stay individual鈥, and she didn鈥檛 鈥渟ee an appetite from ministers to challenge that, particularly wholesale鈥to] remove SATs entirely鈥. 鈥淭hat said, we are seeing quite a number of SATs choosing to join MATs. Where they are vulnerable, we are encouraging it even more.鈥