The proposition of governing a school trust is fundamentally different from governing a maintained school. This guidance focuses on four areas, or “domains”, and twenty elements that arise in the specific context of trust governance.
The domains draw on the governance literature from within and from outside our sector, notably from the charity sector and the corporate sector where boards are their own legal entities and have duties as employers, under charity or company law.
While there may be comparable problems in maintained schools, problem-identification and solutions will be specific to trust governance. Without domain-specific knowledge of school trust governance, trustees will be hampered in carrying out their role.
The trustees of an academy trust are both charity trustees and company directors. In some trusts, particularly those with religious designations, those on the board are known as ‘directors’ and the term ‘trustees’ is used for those on the board of a separate trust that owns school land. In this guidance we follow the principle in the Department for Education’s Academy trust handbook and refer to people on the academy trust board as trustees.
This guidance is intended to supplement and not replace the regulatory framework set out in the Academy trust handbook and can be used together with CST’s Assurance framework for trust governance. It should also be read in conjunction with the Department for Education’s Academy trust governance guide and the sector-led Academy trust governance code.
Updated September 2025.
