Summary of our governance model

The Pioneer Academy is a charitable company that operates multiple schools as one legal entity. Our model of governance allows for strategic board decision making, focused and effective executive leadership, and local engagement and input from stakeholders. Each tier of governance contributes to helping establish each school’s values and ethos, monitoring educational and financial performance and linking them with their communities.

The tiers of governance are:

Members: The role of members is to hold the trustees to account, assure themselves that the governance of the trust is effective and that trustees are acting in accordance with the trust’s charitable object(s). Members are not involved in the day-to-day business of the trust. However, members have key powers, including the appointment and removal of trustees and amending the memorandum and articles of association.

Board of trustees: The board of trustees is the legally responsible and accountable body for every school. The board holds legal liability for areas that would normally be the responsibility of a local governing body in a maintained school, such as the single central register and policies, with support from the central team. While the board may delegate many of its functions (for example to the executive team or a committee), the board remains accountable for these functions.

Trustee committees: Through the governance framework and scheme of delegation, the board delegates authority and responsibility for a range of duties to the following entities to ensure effective leadership and governance of the trust:

• Audit and risk committee: Responsible for monitoring and reviewing governance, compliance, risk management and internal controls.
• Remuneration committee: Responsible for reviewing senior salaries and advising on pay policies.
• Chair and Vice Chair Group: Responsible for ensuring flows of reporting to and from the School Boards and the Trust Board
• School Boards: Responsible for localised challenge and support on community-facing aspects of school and stakeholder engagement. They also provide local assurance for the board on the experiences of pupils, parents, staff and the wider community.

The executive

Through the governance framework and scheme of delegation, the board delegates authority and responsibility for a range of duties to the executive which includes:

• Executive team and trust shared services: Responsibility for the delivery of strategic goals and educational, financial and operational outcomes as agreed with the board.
• School Head Teachers: Responsibility for delivering all educational and operational outcomes in their individual school and management of financial and HR matters at school level, with the support of the trust shared services.

How does the board of trustees obtain assurance that functions are carried out properly?

Portfolio reports, provided by members of the central team, provide the Board of Trustees with assurances.  In addition, the Board of Trustees focus on:

• setting strategy, and monitoring and challenging implementation
• summative performance information regarding educational provision (including safeguarding)
• trust-wide policy formation and evaluation
• key decisions, including those with direct legal implications

How we differ from maintained schools

Academies deliberately operate under a different structure of governance from maintained schools, which are supported by local authorities. Governance structures in maintained schools are predominantly determined by legislation, whereas trusts have the ability to set their own approach to better reflect their organisation and local circumstances.

What does this mean for school inspection?

Establishing responsibility for leadership and governance

The Ofsted School Inspection Handbook (SIH) states: “There are a wide variety of leadership and governance models in the school sector, so it is essential that inspectors establish who is responsible for what.” Lead inspectors will therefore need to establish “the different levels of responsibility and oversight within the trust” and “who they need to meet from the trust, for example who (in the trust and in the school) is responsible for key decisions about safeguarding, behaviour and curriculum content”. The SIH makes clear:

“When inspecting academies, inspectors will need to bear in mind that governance functions can be quite different from those in a maintained school. Some functions that a governing body in a maintained school would carry out may be done by the trust’s leaders or staff. If this is the case, it will be important for inspectors to ascertain the board of trustees’ role in that process and how it ensures and assures that these functions are carried out properly.”

Who attends inspections on behalf of the trust?

For leadership, the SIH makes clear that leaders “will include the CEO and anyone else agreed between the headteacher, CEO and lead inspector” and inspectors “will, as a minimum, want to meet the CEO if possible but will recognise that (especially in large trusts) CEOs may need other senior trust leaders present to support these meetings.”

For governance, the SIH explains that inspectors “will recognise that trusts are a single legal entity and that decisions made by individual academies and those by trust leaders cannot easily be separated.” Inspectors should arrange for at least one meeting with the chair of the board of trustees or their delegate. As with the chief executive it will not always be possible for the chair to attend every inspection.

Further information

For further information about our governance model, please contact Anne Slade [coo@thepioneeracademy.co.uk] with your query.