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.

The paper, part of CST's 'Bridge to the Future' series, makes the powerful argument that as we emerge from the pandemic that we should consider with fresh perspective the future for our Church of England schools.

This guidance includes a code of principles for determining executive pay, which CST recommends trust boards adopt.

This guidance is intended to support trust boards with an evidence-based process to set executive pay and should be read in conjunction with the CST Code of Principles for Setting Executive Pay and the Academy Trust Handbook.

This guidance sets out the principal roles of the accounting officer as expected by Parliament and set out in the Academy Trust Handbook. It also covers the key messages for trusts in the statutory guidance Managing Public Money.

This guidance, in partnership with Stone King LLP, sets out the strategic and operational considerations around trust growth for the trustees and executive leaders, with particular focus on how trusts can grow through academy conversion and academy transfers.