Governance Structure

Our Trust governance structure is described here.  Our Trustees are the most important people involved in our governance. They are accountable for all aspects of our work, including the performance of every one of our academies.  The detail of the organisational structure and how governance is organised is described here.  Our Trustees have established a ‘Standards and Curriculum Committee’ that oversees the detailed monitoring of educational performance in our academies.  We always try to ensure that inspectors speak directly to a trustee that is a member of this committee.   Committee members are linked to identified aspects of our improvement strategy and so are informed by the standard reporting at committee meetings as well as regular, more detailed discussions with colleagues about priority focus areas.

The Trust Board believes that effective local governance is important in ensuring that Trustees are supported to understand how well the Trust and its academies are performing.  For several years it had mandated the establishment of an Academy Advisory Council (AAC) for each of our academies, that operated as a local stakeholder group and therefore never played a role in inspection activity.  Following a consultation during 2022-23, the Trust Board has revised our local governance structures for implementation during the 2023-24 academic year when we will establish a Regional Governance Committee (RGC) for each of our geographic hubs.  Each RGC will consist of parent representatives as well as members representing key players in the local community, such as employers, charities, public services and community groups.  The detail of RGCs is found here.

 

Academy Improvement

A Chief Education Officer (CEdO) oversees the performance of all academies in a phase and reports directly to the Standards and Curriculum Committee and Trust Board, along with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Each phase has an academy support and improvement strategy that is detailed within an ‘Improvement Framework’.  Each Framework outlines a standardised approach to monitoring, challenge, intervention and support. This includes our Risk Indicator monitoring process, where a set of robustly defined education factors are considered, evaluated and RAG rated at least each term.  The risk indicators inform the subsequent differentiated support arrangements and ongoing monitoring of each academy.  The Framework is formally reviewed each year and the activities underpinning it are continually evolving, responding to needs as they arise.

A further set of Trust-wide Risk Factors are considered by the Executive Leadership Team and academies with concerns are discussed regularly to ensure all parts of the trust are joined up, supporting improved performance at an academy level.

Each academy has an allocated Education Director (ED) who is an experienced former Principal and reports to the Chief Education Officer.  The ED provides line management to Principals and supports improvement through the activities as described in the Framework.  During an inspection, the academy’s ED can share or explain the framework and discuss the impact of support provided to the academy.

 

 

The Framework describes the three elements to our improvement strategy:

1. Building capacity and expertise in leaders and practitioners – through our CPD programmes, Assurance Boards and networks
2. Ensuring effective and accurate academy-level bespoke Improvement Plans - that focus leaders on the specific aspects of practice relevant to their setting to bring about the greatest impact on pupils’ learning
3. Ensuring high quality, effective trust-level quality assurance processes – to provide robust information to trustees and valuable feedback to academy leaders

 

The activities that underpin each area are summarised here and the ED can describe how the academy specifically engages, contributes and benefits from our work.

The Greenwood Academies Trust supports academies to develop their own, high quality, ambitious curriculum through implementing our improvement strategies, professional development opportunities and quality assurance activities. We encourage our academies to develop partnerships with relevant local and regional organisations and networks.  We believe strongly in a place-based approach to education and working closely with families and the local community.

 

Click here to find out more about Trust Governance