The “massive need” for more academy trustees

The English education system’s move towards a structure of multi-academy trusts seems to me to be placing huge pressures on the supply chain of people who will perform the role of academy trustee.

The scale of the challenge

Data from 2016 show the number of multi-academy trusts (MATs) rising from 391 in 2011 to 1,121 last year. Sir David Carter, the national schools commissioner, has said that “a further 1,000 new MATs will be needed by 2020 with smaller chains having to grow to accommodate more schools”.

Given that a small MAT of five schools should have at least six trustees, and larger ones up to 12, then it can be seen that there will be a massive need for high quality trustees over the next few years. I have no idea of the actual number of trustees in MATs at the moment, but it must be in excess of 5,000.

The organisation Academy Ambassadors, set up in 2013 is, I feel, a highly effective body which helps MATs with the right-skill set and of the right calibre to apply. However, the organisation is only as good as the people who apply. In my experience, the majority of people I interviewed as a MAT chair did not have the necessary skills to become good trustees; I was told there were plenty of good quality applicants in London, but Academies Ambassadors said they were struggling to find them in the West Midlands.

In this new world, where MATs are meant to be taking over from local authorities for thousands of schools across the country, this will prove a major stumbling block to growing high performance MATs throughout England unless this regional variability can be addressed.

The basic numbers give a sense of the scale of the challenge. On its website (http://bit.ly/1QXlKVk) , Academy Ambassadors said it has, since 2013, “matched over 600 non-executive directors to academy trust boards and recruited a further 500+ potential non-executives”.

But the gap between those numbers and the number of academies – nearly 7,000 – and MATs suggests both an urgent need to scale up their work and also for more general efforts to be put in to encourage more high-calibre people to apply.

Demands of being a trustee

However, recruitment will not be easy, because of the demands placed on individuals in these roles.

In my experience, a trustee must have extensive induction and on-going training for the first 12 months to ensure they fully understand the business and processes of a MAT and to enable them to add value.

This is true especially if they come from a business background.  Once they are trained up, they will need a considerable amount of time during any one month to fulfil their role.  Two days plus per month during term time is not uncommon.

This puts real pressure on those trustees who are working full-time. They need not just a very understanding employer, but also to be in control of their diaries. One excellent trustee from the public sector I worked with, who made a real contribution, had to give up her role after a year because she was unable to attend key meetings, even when they had been agreed well in advance.

Those trustees who are retired generally have good time availability, but we cannot rely entirely on retirees. The trust board must also have a wide range of skill sets available, from finance, general management, governance and strategic to educational and school improvement, human resources and estates.

Trustees must attend board meetings and committee meetings. They must know some detail about the operation of the MAT and ideally should take on a specialist area of responsibility and link with one of the senior management team, such as those responsible for finance, audit and risk management; school improvement; safeguarding; human resources; growth/new academies; governance of the board itself; and estates.

In order to ensure compliance with key regulations, trustees must also know and apply the DfE Governance Handbook, Academies Financial Handbook, and charity governance guidelines. They must be familiar with some of the schools in the Trust. They will be required to sit on interview panels for new principals, senior executive roles within the Trust, new trustees appointments and so on.

This is a list of just some of the roles, responsibilities and activities required of a Trustee.

Overall, the academies scheme puts a lot of emphasis on the role of governors to perform much of the oversight function previously required of local authorities. Therefore, it is vital that the supply chain is filled.

Why does this matter?

Good governance is at the heart of making sure schools run well. During the early years of MATs, very often trustees were appointed because they were either friends or colleagues of the sponsor or CEO. Whilst many had educational skills, there was a shortage of business-related skills, particularly in finance. This naturally led to some CEOs being given an easy ride, and not enough challenge, and this is very evident in some of the reports of Education Funding Agency investigations resulting from whistleblowers.

So the role of trustee is absolutely central to making sure that the organisation functions effectively and is not run into the ground. Trustees have the ultimate responsibility for directing the affairs of the trust, and for ensuring it is solvent, well-run and delivering the outcomes for which the trust was set up. As a MAT, the trustees must have sufficient oversight of the key management team to whom they have delegated their decision-making responsibilities.

Can the government find sufficient high-quality trustees to rise to this challenge? Well, with huge demands on the supply chain as discussed, great demands on individuals and with the system as a whole coming in for regular criticism – see, for example, the recent Education Select Committee report http://bit.ly/2y9ulVD on MATs – this is still an open question.

Stephen Tilsley worked at director level at Metsec plc, a medium-sized manufacturing business in the West Midlands. He was its chief executive from 1998 until 2008, when it employed 350 people and had a sales turnover in excess of £100m supplying the engineering and construction industries in the UK and Europe. He was also chair of the steel industry training body, supporting and promoting apprenticeships and improving the skills and qualifications of the sector’s workforce.  

Shortly after retirement in 2008 he became an Interim Executive Board member at a secondary school in the Black Country and subsequently chair of a new team of governors. The school joined a multi-academy trust in 2012 and he was asked to become a trustee in 2014. He was chair of the MAT from Sept 2015 until Oct 2016.