What is Governance?
Governance determines how decisions are made within an organisation. It is the framework that establishes who makes decisions, how stakeholders play a part in decision-making and how organisations are held to account.
The core governance functions within a multi-academy trust are to:
- Ensure there is clarity of vision, ethos, and strategic direction.
- Hold the executive leaders to account for the educational performance of the organisation and its pupils, and the performance management of staff.
- Oversee the financial performance of the organisations and makes sure its money is well spent.
- Ensure that other key players with a stake in the organisation get their voices heard.
Good governance is also accountable, ethical, and effective. It provides strong strategic leadership, creates a shared sense of organisational identity, and ensures compliance with statutory and contractual regulations. This relies on having people round the table with the right skills and knowledge to support good decision-making, and a balanced and diverse team. The Trust recruits its trustees and governors to reflect the local communities that it serves, with a range of skills and experience, including in areas such as education, business, human resources, finance, and risk management.
Structure
Members have a similar role to the shareholders of a company. The role of Members and Trustees are separate in order to achieve robust accountability. Members have ultimate control over the multi-academy trust, with the ability to:
- Amend the Articles of Association (AA’s)
- Appoint/remove/suspend existing Members
- Appoint/remove/suspend existing Trustees
- By special resolution, issue direction to Trustees to take a specific action
- Appoint external auditors and receive/approve the financial statement and annual report
- Change the name of the company and ultimately wind up the Academy Trust
The Trustees are both charity trustees and company directors. Academy Trusts are charitable companies and the trustees must comply with company law requirements.
Duties are largely the same as those of a governor of a maintained school. Trustees have responsibility for 3 core governance functions:
- Ensuring clarity of visions, ethos and setting the strategic direction,
- Holding executive leaders to account for the educational performance of the organisation and its pupils and the performance management of staff
- Ensuring effective financial performance
The Local Governing Body of each academy meets at least 3 times a year to assure the highest quality provision, safeguarding and equality of opportunity for all pupils, and effective support and management of staff. Through formal reviews the LGB robustly considers school performance.
The LGB considers:
- The Academy Principal’s Report – self-evaluation against current OFSTED criteria and any other criteria set by the LGB or the Trust
- Impact of key actions from the Academy Improvement Plan
- Monitoring activities undertaken by the academy
- Local and contextualised issues
- Direction from the Trust Board
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