Do you want to make a difference? Could you help provide strategic leadership for an academy trust? Have you got experience managing stakeholders effectively?
What difference will you make?
While the role carries significant responsibility, it also offers a highly rewarding opportunity to use your professional expertise to make a lasting impact on an academy trust and the communities it serves. As a voluntary position, it also provides a flexible way to contribute your skills and experience in a meaningful and influential role.
Becoming an academy trustee gives you valuable exposure to senior‑level strategic decision‑making, and can offer opportunity to ‘give back’ to those already familiar with this level of working; helping to strengthen your leadership profile and support your career progression, or offering a valuable chance to utilise extensive and well‑honed professional skills in a broad and far‑reaching sector. It also offers exceptional personal and professional development opportunities, enabling you to broaden your experience, connections, knowledge and enhance or utilise your governance and leadership skills, and build confidence in complex decision‑making.
Serving as a trustee can also showcase your ability to succeed in a non‑executive role, supporting the development of a strong portfolio career. Most importantly, it provides the chance to make a meaningful difference to the quality of education and governance within academy trusts by applying your professional skills where they can have real and lasting impact.
What are we looking for?
Academy trust boards are looking for leaders with senior, strategic, and board‑level experience from across the corporate, third and education sectors. By combining the expertise of executive leaders within academy trusts with the governance and leadership skills of professionals from a wide range of industries and backgrounds, academy trusts can help shape the future of education.
We are seeking experienced senior leaders who thrive in strategic roles, can confidently manage large volumes of information, and are able to make connections across complex organisations. Future academy trustees will have experience of operating at scale, responsibility for multi‑million‑pound budgets and familiarity with the Nolan Principles and the functions of effective governance.
Hybrid
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What will you be doing?
Requiring a strategic mindset and board level experience, the role of an academy trustee can be quite different from the role of a school governor. While the position is voluntary, it offers a rewarding opportunity to use your expertise to help shape the future of education.
The main job of an academy trustee is to help steer the academy trust in the right direction, hold the academy trust’s leadership to account, and deliver the academy trust’s objectives, all while upholding the Nolan Principles of Public Life. Together, the board of academy trustees ensure the academy trust is compliant, operating efficiently, and delivering value for money. As outlined in the Academy Trust Handbook, as well as being charities, academy trusts are legal entities and so the board is accountable and responsible for the academy trust itself. Considered a ‘dual role’, individuals are trustees of the charitable body, and non‑executive directors, listed on Companies House and subject to company law.
The role includes
- Providing strategic leadership for the academy trust.
- Setting a clear vision and strategy with specific goals and timelines.
- Ensuring effective accountability and reporting structures are in place.
- Holding leaders to account by identifying weaknesses or underperformance and asking the right questions to address them.
- Engaging effectively with stakeholders.
- Offering fresh insights into the challenges facing the academy trust and how they can be tackled.
- Oversight of, and responsibility for, numerous sites depending on the size of the academy trust.
- Accountability for public money and ensuring transparency in its spending, and value for taxpayer money.
Depending on the academy trust, you may also decide what responsibilities can be handled by local schools within the academy trust.
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