Trust CEO Professional Community

Our Trust CEO Professional Community is open to any serving CEO/ Accounting Officer.

All our Professional Communities are designed to be knowledge-building networks. The Professional Community is not a traditional leadership programme, nor is it a network in the commonly used meaning of that phrase. We want to be as precise as possible about why we are bringing colleagues together, so our half-termly Community sessions will be built on the domains of CST's Building Strong Trusts.

The problems we face as a system are complex problems meaning that, unlike complicated problems, they are unlikely to be easily predictable or analysable and can rarely be solved in the sense of finished. However, we can narrow the field of complexity and build stronger professional knowledge and expertise. This is what our Trust CEO Community of Practice intends to do.

It has never been more important that we build robust institutions that can respond to this complexity.

As a member of the community, you will also gain exclusive access to our virtual platform. CST Hive is a peer learning platform that connects you with a community of information, resources and support, that you can access anytime and anywhere. On the platform you'll find an ever-growing collection of resources, containing information about key knowledge areas needed in our profession, as well as a space to connect, learn and interact with your peers from across the country.

Membership of the community is included for accounting officers of member trusts as a benefit of CST membership. Join using the button below with your MyCST membership details.

Join our Trust CEO Professional Community

Session overview

Session one: Strategic governance - the Academy Trust Governance Code

10:00-11:00, Thursday 14 September 2023

Lera Cruddas CBE, Chief Executive of CST, in conversation with Linbert Spencer OBE. 

As you will be aware, this year, the 6 community sessions will focus on building strong trusts. This first session is on strategic governance. Leora will introduce Samira Sadeghi, CST’s new Director of Trust Governance. Leora will briefly outline the policy context and tell the story of the Academy Trust Governance Code. The public consultation on the Code has concluded and we are currently finalising the Code for publication at the CST conference. This session offers a preview of the Code.

We are delighted that Leora will be joined by Linbert Spencer OBE. Linbert is Co-founder and Chairman of The Windsor Fellowship, a national non-profit, and Co-founder of The Centre for Inclusive Leadership, and is the Chair of the Board of Trustees for All We Can.

Linbert will offers his views on strategic governance. Then Leora and Linbert will have a conversation about principle 6 of the Academy Trust Governance Code: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

 

Session two: Virtuous Leadership and the work of Viviane Robinson

10:00-11:00, Thursday 16 November 2023

For this second session of the CEO Professional Community in 2023-24, Leora Cruddas will lead a session on Ethical Leadership in Education. This session explores the second of the seven domains in our Building Strong Trusts Assurance Framework, "Expert Ethical Leadership.” Leora will cover the following:

  • The Commission for Ethics in Public Life’s most recent report, Leading in Practice. You can read Lord Evans’ Open Letter to Public Sector Leaders in preparation for this session.
  • The sector-led framework on Ethical Leadership in Education.
  • The work of Viviane Robinson (Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and Visiting Professor at University College London) in her book on "Virtuous Educational Leadership: Doing the Right Work the Right Way."

The importance of both Leading in Practice and Virtuous Educational Leadership is that it locates ethics in the work of leading– in the decisions we make and the actions we take every day. In Viviane’s words, it is about doing the right work in the right way.


 

SESSION three: High-Quality, inclusive education - the work of the inquiry on sector-led improvement

10:00-11:00, Thursday 18 January 2024

Steve Rollett, Deputy Chief Executive of CST, in conversation with speakers TBA.

SESSION four: workforce resilience and wellbeing

10:00-11:00, Thursday 5 March 2024

Speakers TBA.

SESSION five: Finance and Operations

10:00-11:00, Wednesday 24 April 2024

Speakers TBA.
 

Session six: Public benefit and civic duty

10:00-11:00, Thursday 13 June 2024
 
Speakers TBA. 

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