This guidance introduces a new self-assessment framework for next-generation governance for school trusts.
Trust governance in England is good. Since the inception of trusts, governance has rightly been focused on compliance to ensure highly effective management of public money and avoidance of failures. The DfE’s assurance work confirms that compliance failures are rare.
Trusts are now the majority of the sector. As system leaders, they must now play a role in designing the type of education system they want to see. And trusts are holding themselves to a higher standard, as evidenced by the bespoke and sector-created Academy Trust Governance Code.
So while compliance is necessary, it is no longer sufficient. In order to harness the positive, performance-enhancing power of governance to address the ‘wicked’ problems we now face in education and build sustainable institutions, we need to go from good to great. To go from good to great, boards will need to look beyond annual skills audits and tick-box self-assessment forms.
This guidance sets out a self-assessment framework to enable that shift and embed it into recruitment, development, evaluation, succession, and re‑appointment, so boards can steward long‑term value with confidence.
The framework is published as an interactive PDF, allowing trust leaders to complete the self-assessment on screen and save and share.
