Bringing Trust Data Together
Multi-Academy Trusts generate huge amounts of data. From attendance, assessment, staffing and finance, the main challenge is; how do Trust leaders bring this data all together in a consistent, meaningful way?
Schools often use different Management Information Systems (MIS), or report data in different formats, which makes cross-Trust analysis time-consuming and unreliable.
That’s why more MATs are turning to Power BI. This powerful reporting tool connects directly to your MIS and transforms raw data into clear, interactive dashboards. This is helping leaders see the bigger picture and make decisions based on real insight.
The Challenge: Inconsistent and Isolated Reporting
Even with shared systems, Trusts often experience:
- Data silos between schools, making it difficult to compare results
- Manual processes — endless spreadsheets and time-consuming collation
- Inconsistent metrics that limit visibility and strategic oversight
These challenges mean Trust leaders spend too much time gathering data, and not enough time analysing it.
How Power BI Supports MAT-Wide Consistency
Microsoft Power BI for MATs allows schools and Trusts to combine data from any MIS — including SIMS, Arbor, Bromcom, and ScholarPack — into a single dashboard.
Once set up, Power BI dashboards can:
- Standardise reports across all schools in your Trust
- Automate updates, pulling in live or regularly refreshed data
- Drill down easily from Trust-level trends to school or pupil detail
- Highlight exceptions automatically using conditional formatting
- Share insights securely with SLT, governors, or finance leads
It replaces hours of manual reporting with instant, visual summaries that make sense at a glance.
What a Trust Dashboard Might Look Like
A MAT Power BI dashboard can be tailored to your Trust’s needs. All Dashboards can be segmented to suit specific job roles or give a global view with aspects from all data areas, for example:
- Attendance dashboards that compare schools against Trust targets
- Assessment dashboards showing progress and attainment by key stage
- Behaviour summaries highlighting trends across schools or cohorts
- Finance and HR dashboards combining key performance and staffing data
With clear visuals and filters, leaders can focus quickly on what’s going well — and where support is needed.
From Data to Decision-Making
The real power of Power BI lies in what it enables: data-driven decision-making.
When every school in a MAT reports consistently, leaders gain a single version of the truth, improving accountability, transparency, and collaboration.
Instead of static spreadsheets, Power BI offers dynamic insights that update automatically, giving Trust leaders confidence in every conversation and report.
See It in Action: Power BI for Schools and MATs
If you’d like to see what this looks like in practice, join our upcoming Power BI: From Data to Dashboard webinar.
We’ll show in real time how data from any MIS can be transformed into live dashboards and analysis pages for senior leaders and school managers.
You’ll also learn what’s possible to build in-house, and how SBS can create bespoke, cost-effective Power BI solutions tailored for your school or Trust.
Join the webinar and discover how Power BI can bring consistency and clarity to your Trust-wide reporting.
Authored by Mark Blackwood
Senior MIS Consultant
Mark has worked in education for over 40 years, initially as a high school teacher before shifting to MIS support working in SIMS training consultancy for over 35 years. He specialises in Timetable, Attendance, Behaviour, Reporting and data analysis and has been creating Power BI reporting solutions for schools and MATS for over 5 years using data from the three market leading MIS solutions.
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