We believe that our primary accountability is to the pupils and parents* served by our academies. Local governance and parental engagement play an important part in our work.

We have been reviewing our approach in this area to make sure we have the most efficient and effective arrangements in place and we will be implementing some new structures during the autumn term of 2024, to take effect from 1 January 2025.

Our Board of Trustees retains accountability for the work of each of our academies, alongside our extensive executive teams.

We ask each of our academies to ensure they have in place an effective parental engagement strategy and we will be strengthening this approach by appointing Academy Parent Ambassadors (APAs) in each of our academies.

We currently constitute GDCs as a committee of the Trust Board and consider that Trustees, members of our former Academy Advisory Councils (AACs) and executives with responsibility for academy oversight fulfil the function of local governance for this purpose.

*we consider 'parent' to include any person who has parental responsibility for or care of one of our pupils