Shaw Education Trust believe in transparency and accountability within our academies and between each Academy and the Trust. The Board will provide support and challenge as required, with the aim of enabling each Academy to work towards earned autonomy.
Local governance and accountability is secured through our system of Academy Councils, with the Trust Board retaining overall legal control of its academies in line with Department for Education and Education Funding Agency expectations.
Information regarding Shaw Education Trust’s Board of Trustees can be viewed here.
For more information, the Trust’s Scheme of Delegation (Delegated Accountability Framework) can be viewed here.
The Shaw Education Trust operates three governance structures within its academies:
Progress Board and Team around the School: led by trust colleagues that hold the school to account around the main areas of school improvement. These meetings take place termly.
Local Advisory Board: this is the structure in most of our academies, which governs similar to most governing bodies in all schools across the country. The composition of this board is usually made up of two parent representatives, two staff representatives, and various co-opted councillors, usually for the community. SET colleagues usually attend to advise and support the council and on the rare occasion can also be an appointed councillor.
Executive Academy Council: This council governs in much the same way as the Academy Council but may be composed of slightly different individuals as directed by the Trust. For example, the Chair can be a SET employee and SET employees can take up position on the council. An Executive AC is usually formed to support an academy due to one or many factors, such as, to possibly through a transition period, to support an inexperienced AC, if new leadership is in place, or possibly if a new Chair within the AC has not been recruited for the existing council. In all/most matters it conducts itself similar to an AC with staff and parent representatives also included.
Interim Executive Board: This type of local governance is used very rarely and only for a dedicated period of time. An IEB is formed by the Trust to support an academy that needs specific specialised support at any given time. This may be due to a range of factors, such as, a re-structure of the academy, significant numbers of new senior leaders, a concern about performance, or other unique situations which the Trust feel the academy needs a period of stability and structured support with. The composition of the IEB is not similar to the other two models and the Trust decide on membership as best fits the particular needs of the academy.
The Shaw Education Trust has now put in place a Local Advisory Board to oversee the strategic governance activities at The Kidsgrove Secondary School.