Barry Nolan MBE, Chair of the Board of Trustees, Eden Academy Trust, Samira Sadeghi, Director of Trust Governance, CST
Leadership
How do you ensure collective responsibility as a board?
We know it isn’t realistic for every trustee to be a subject matter expert on all areas of the trust. We have committees with delegated powers – Finance, Remuneration and Performance Management – as well as an advisory Audit & Risk Committee and School Local Advisory Boards (LABs). What has worked really well is that we have nominated Portfolio Trustees – each Trustee develops specialist knowledge around a particular area and gets under the skin of it. Portfolio Trustees liaise directly with the relevant senior leadership team member and then report back to the full board, with a focus on developing discussion around specific high-level strategic questions we need to think about as a whole. This includes a Standards Trustee portfolio rather than the usual committee. This means that Trustees have a very good understanding in all areas of the Trust but detailed knowledge of their own portfolio. With this approach, our board is now the strongest it’s ever been.
Decision making, risk and control
You are based in the south, but you took on schools in the north of England. This seems like a risk. What was the board’s thinking?
We were approached by two schools in the north. They saw more sense in joining a special school trust than being the only special school in a mixed trust. Since the pandemic, much of our work is conducted virtually anyway. So, we feel that geography is far less important than shared values and ways of working.
How do you create alignment with new schools while still allowing them to retain their identity?
We have some ‘musts’, mostly non-educational aspects like our finance systems. But we understand the need for balancing alignment with a sense of place. If you ask someone who works at James Rennie, our school in Carlisle, are you James Rennie staff or Eden staff? They may say James Rennie staff first. Same with a parent - what matters first and foremost is what is happening in their school, not the trust. From a governance perspective, the school operates under the Eden umbrella, but it retains its sense of identity and some control over decision-making.
How do you delegate to your local committees?
We’ve been on a bit of a journey with our LABs. We started out calling them ‘governors’ and then were surprised when they wanted to act like governors! It can be challenging to move away from that because everyone understands the concept of a ‘school governor’. Some of our LABs took a little while to adjust but we have half termly meetings with our LAB Chairs and this means we now have the right balance that allows LABs to properly support and challenge their schools as required.
Board effectiveness
How do you monitor your own effectiveness as a Board?
Last year, we commissioned an external review of governance by CST. It was extremely helpful and allowed us to tweak some of our established procedures. We also conduct an annual review process that includes my performance as Chair. We use the same format each year to track progress year-on-year. I will then have discussions with each trustee about their contributions over the year, whether the board is making the best use of their skills, how we might do things better, their plans and whether they are happy to continue into the next year.
How do you make sure you have the right mix of people on the board?
The three things I look for in a trustee are:
- experience as a non-executive director and the ability to operate at trust level;
- demonstrable experience and skills to fulfil the specialist portfolio we are seeking to fill; and
- the ‘why’ – why do they want to be a trustee at Eden?
We want to see a genuine interest in our mission as a trust of special schools, often based on personal life experience of a family member with special needs. But the key thing is having a passion for our mission.
In my day job at Barclays, I’m used to difficult conversations on occasion, but none are as difficult as those with trustees who, for whatever reason, were not a good fit. Thankfully this doesn’t happen too often. We are volunteers and not being paid, so it’s tricky. But it’s so important for the Chair to be able to have those honest conversations and ensure that everyone on the board has values that align with the trust.
CST can support you as a Chair through the Chairs Development Programme. You can also become a member of our Trust SEND and Inclusion Professional Community as part of your membership. Finally, CST offers high quality External Reviews of Governance that will identify areas of strength and weakness and help you improve governance at your trust.
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