The aim of this framework is to identify trusts' most significant areas of strength and challenge, so that they can build organisational capacity. It is diagnostic, not evaluative, or judgemental.
The framework is supported by Ambition Institute, Challenge Partners, Evidence Based Education, the National Institute of Teaching, and ImpactEd.
Updated September 2024.

In February 2022, CST published an influential discussion paper asking the question, ‘What is a strong trust?’ Since then, we have engaged in a sector-wide discussion to understand how our proposed domains of organisational strength and resilience aligned with sector thinking and the emerging evidence base. This paper sets out our current policy position.

Ahead of further strike action, Platinum Partner Browne Jacobson has provided an update on industrial action.

This rapid audit tool for trustees provides a way for trustees to self-assess their understanding, using CST’s Assurance framework for trust governance as a base. The form can be filled in electronically and saved for return to trust governance professionals, or printed out for completion on paper.

Following the publication of the Academies Regulatory and Commissioning Review, Leora Cruddas CBE presented an overview of the review at a special member briefing.

This glossary is intended primarily to help new trustees and academy committee members with some common terms used in education. It focuses on terms relevant to academies and trusts, rather than legacy terms for maintained schools.
A downloadable version is available but we recommend using the online version for ease of use and to ensure you have the most recent information.

CST has asked Stone King to provide a briefing note for members on reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) and potential liability for trusts and trust leaders.

In this pamphlet, CST chief executive Leora Cruddas CBE sets out the case for the school trust, and a trust-based system. It attempts to set out why a trust-based system might be our best bet, and explains why a group of schools working together in a school trust is so much more than simply the changing of the legal structure of the school.

School trusts are complex and agile organisations. The proposition of governance should therefore be a live conversation and boards should monitor and improve their performance continually. This updated toolkit outlines our 20-element assurance framework including guiding questions to consider and descriptors of what strong and weak assurance would look like in a trust at board level.
The new September 2023 version can be either completed electronically or printed out.

The Schools White Paper and SEND and Alternative Provision Green Paper together bring the ‘system’ into view. Both papers offer an analysis of the education system and provide firm proposals on matters of system governance. System governance refers to the structures, mechanisms, and processes by which the organisations responsible for delivery are held to account. The White and Green Papers propose to do this largely (but not exclusively) through commissioning and regulation.

This paper sets out six questions that we should consider as part of the regulatory review.