MAT Tech Roadmap for 2026–27: A Senior Leader’s Guide

I had a call with an Executive Head last week.

She told me she was “sorting out the tech for September.”

What she meant was:

• three vendor demos booked

• a £40k budget gap

• and no clear link to the trust’s actual priorities

That’s not a roadmap.

That’s a shopping list with a deadline.

If you’re heading into summer with technology decisions to make, here’s the simple way to do it properly—without rewriting your strategy in August at 11 pm.

Start with the trust, not the tech

Most trusts get this the wrong way round.

They start with software. Or a demo. Or whatever problem shouted the loudest last term.

That’s how you end up with a tech stack that looks busy—but doesn’t actually move anything forward.

A proper MAT tech roadmap starts somewhere much simpler: the trust itself.

Before you look at a single system, ask three questions:

• What are we trying to achieve over the next 12–36 months?

• Where is technology helping—and where is it getting in the way?

• What would need to be true for us to feel genuinely confident in our digital setup?

If you can’t answer those clearly, any decision you make next is guesswork.

The DfE standards are a useful baseline. They tell you what “good” looks like across infrastructure, cyber, safeguarding, and governance.

But they’re only the baseline.

If you’re not meeting them, start there.

If you are, your job isn’t to add more tech—it’s to be more deliberate about the tech you already have.

Build it on four foundations, not forty priorities

Most roadmaps fail because they try to do too much.

You don’t need 20 priorities.

You need clarity.

The trusts that get this right tend to focus on four things:

• Infrastructure that works — devices, identity, connectivity, resilience

• Data you can trust — one version of the truth across the trust

• Tools that earn their place — software that’s used, not just paid for

• People who can actually use it — planned CPD linked to real systems

That’s it.

That’s the spine of your roadmap.

Everything else hangs off those four areas.

If your plan has 15 strategic priorities, it won’t get delivered.

Pick a small number of things. Do them properly. Then move on.

Make it board-ready, not bookshelf-ready

This is where most strategies die.

They get written like consultancy decks—long, polished, and completely unusable.

A good roadmap is simple.

It fits on 4–6 pages.

It says:

• what you’re doing

• in what order

• with what budget

• owned by who

• reviewed when

A trustee should be able to read it in 15 minutes and ask sensible questions.

If they can’t, it’s not clear enough.

With trust-level Ofsted inspections now in play, this isn’t just operational—it’s governance.

A vague roadmap isn’t neutral.

It’s a risk.

Where to start

If you don’t have a clear roadmap right now, don’t overcomplicate it.

Start with the four foundations.

Score your trust honestly, 1 to 5, across each one.

Whatever scores lowest—that’s your starting point.

Not everything.

Just that one thing.

Get momentum over the next 90 days, then build from there.

That’s how good strategies actually get delivered.

A useful next step

If you want something practical to work from, I’ve built a simple 90-Day Tech Roadmap Template.

It’s designed to be:

• quick to complete

• easy to present

• and actually used

Or if you’d rather talk it through, I offer a free 30-minute strategy call.

No pitch. Just a useful conversation.

Either way—you don’t need more tech.

You need a clearer plan.