Former chair of governors at forced academy takeover school now acting chief executive at chain once poised to run it

A strike demonstration outside the John Roan last October

A well-known former chair of governors who was caught up in controversy over the abortive takeover of a London comprehensive by an academy trust has been acting as the chain’s chief executive in recent months, Education Uncovered has learnt.

Christine Whatford, a very experienced former local government official and consultant, who stood down as chair of governors at the John Roan school, Greenwich, after it failed an Ofsted inspection last year, is now acting chief executive at the east London-based University Schools Trust (UST).

She has been in this role since at least February, with the trust telling Education Uncovered that the current permanent chief executive, Grahame Price, has been on sick leave. Whatford is also a former chair of the UST.

The detail

The UST had been in line to take control of the John Roan in the teeth of a vigorous campaign of opposition including sustained staff strike action, before UST pulled out just before Christmas.

There had been rumours that Price was stepping down after its decision to pull out of the John Roan was announced. However, he told me at the time that this was not true, saying: “I very much enjoy my work here at UST and am as keen as ever that UST should continue  our innovative work.”

There appears to have been no public announcement of Whatford stepping into the role temporarily, with UST’s website appearing to give no clue that she is currently running the trust, which has two schools: one each in Greenwich and Tower Hamlets.

However, the latest news item on the trust’s website, dated February 13^th, states that Whatford attended an event to mark the launch of the UST* as its “interim chief executive”.

I sought comment from the UST as to what the current situation was: who was running the trust, how long Whatford had been in charge and if she was still holding the position of acting CEO, or had held it, and why she was in the role.

A response from UST, saying it was from an unnamed “chair of the trust”, said that Price remained CEO; that “Christine Whatford became acting CEO in February 2019 at short notice when Grahame Price went on sick leave;” and that “we are anticipating Christine Whatford will step down at the end of July 2019”.

The revelation seems to underline controversy around Whatford’s well-known close association with the UST, as discussed during its planned takeover by the John Roan.

The former local government education official, who briefly led Greenwich council’s children’s services department after 14 years as director of education at Hammersmith and Fulham, was chair of governors at the John Roan when she reportedly brought in UST to provide leadership support to the school.

Months later it failed an Ofsted report, with Whatford resigning shortly afterwards. The school was then quickly lined up by the government’s Regional Schools Commissioner to be taken over by UST. There is no suggestion that Whatford played any part in that process.

A check through UST documents on Companies House shows that Whatford has now held positions at three senior levels in and around the trust. She served as a trustee of the organisation from September 2015 to May 2016, with the 2014-15 accounts, signed off by Whatford herself in January 2016, listing her as its chair at that time.

Those 2014-15 accounts also list her as a “member” of UST, so able to appoint or dismiss trustees. In fact, for that year she was listed as the only member who was a person, the other four members being organisations.

The upshot of all of this is that the person who was recently chair of the governing body of a school which went on to be very controversially lined up for an academy takeover has now served as chair, member and acting chief executive of the trust which was meant to absorb it.

There is no suggestion or evidence of a conflict of interest in that decision: Whatford had stood down as a governor and in any case the decision about academisation was not the school governing body’s to take.

Whatford certainly brings a wealth of experience to any education position: she was the headteacher of Abbey Wood school, also in Greenwich, for six years before departing for local government, and is a CBE.

Her LinkedIn profile also lists her as an adviser to the Baker Dearing Trust, which supports University Technical Colleges, of which the former Greenwich UTC, which formed the basis for the creation of the University Schools Trust in 2016 (see below), was one.

Whatford’s multiple local positions will still be very contentious with campaigners who have opposed the takeover, and with the John Roan’s future still uncertain: its protracted takeover is now in line to end with it becoming part of England’s largest chain, United Learning.

Without the academies policy’s regime of sometimes bitterly-contested takeovers, such controversies would seem unlikely to arise.

-UST governance overview

As an aside, it is still being claimed, in discussions about academy governance on social media, that trusts no longer operate with small numbers of individuals or organisations in control, as was the case in the policy’s early days.

But a look back through the governance documents for UST and its predecessor organisations shows this to be untrue in this case, as in others, with the trust ultimately controlled – subject to distant regulation by the Department for Education – by just one body.

The UST’s current articles of association, its constitution, show that it has only one founding, corporate, member, which is a university: Queen Mary, University of London. This one individual member is then effectively allowed, under the constitution, to appoint other members, as the rules state that existing members can appoint others.

The constitution also shows that any member who appointed another member can sack the member they appointed, should they wish. (Are you keeping up?)

Therefore, that one founding member would appear to have control.

The members get to appoint up to 10 trustees, who do the detailed governance work, while Queen Mary itself can appoint an additional up to two trustees. Other board members will be the chief executive and a minimum of two parents, plus any further appointments made by the board itself.

In this way, again it can be seen that governance of this group (currently, a pair) of state-funded schools appears in the control of one organisation: Queen Mary.

UST’s latest accounts show its members headed by Queen Mary, but also featuring another university (King’s College, London); a council (Tower Hamlets); a housing association; an insurance company; and the cross-bench peer, Lord Mawson. Its constitution implies that the first appointing member was Queen Mary, with the others then following.

Until 2016, UST was known as University Technical College, Royal Borough of Greenwich. Up to 2013, it had simply been called Greenwich UTC. The trust was founded under that name in 2011.

The Royal Greenwich UTC, a 14-to-19 establishment as all UTCs are, closed in 2016, only to re-open as Royal Greenwich Trust School, taking pupils from 11 to 19, after a reported injection of £13 million by Greenwich council.

Greenwich council had itself been one of the three founding signatories of Greenwich UTC, with the trust’s articles giving that organisation, at one stage, the right to appoint trustees and thus influence over its governance.

Royal Greenwich Trust School joined UST at its foundation in 2016. In January, the school was rated “requires improvement” by Ofsted.

UST’s other school, St Paul’s Way, has an outstanding rating from Ofsted dating back to 2013, under Price as headteacher, though before it academised under UST in 2016.

In summary, here is an academy chain constructed on the back of a former University Technical College which closed, whose constitution hands control to a single organisation.

The academies policy is nothing if not…complex.

-The John Roan currently has no governance information on the DfE’s “Get Information about Schools” website, as is a requirement. See its page here.

*It was actually set up under the current name back in September 2016, so this event seems a long while in the gestation.