Key responsibilities for the role include:

• Strategic Leadership: approving and championing the vision, ethos and strategy of the Trust.
• Accountability: holding the organisation and each other to account for driving up educational standards and financial performance.
• People: ensuring the Trust recruits, retains and develops staff with the right skills, experience, qualities and capacity.
• Structures: approving and upholding the governance structure that reinforces clearly defined roles and responsibilities, and ensures the right decisions are made by the right people at the right time.
• Compliance: ensuring the Trust complies with statutory and contractual requirements as required by relevant regulation
• Evaluation: continually monitoring and reporting against key indicators to improve quality and impact

The successful candidate will:

The principles and personal attributes that individuals bring to our Trust Board are as important as their skills and knowledge. These qualities enable members to use their skills and knowledge to function well as part of a team, and make an active contribution to effective governance. All members of our Board are expected to exhibit the seven principles of public life (the Nolan principles) in all our work.

In addition, all those involved in governance should be:

• Committed: devoting the required time and energy to the role and ambitious to achieve best possible outcomes for young people. Prepared to give time, skills and knowledge to developing themselves and others in order to create highly effective governance.
• Confident: with an independent mind, able to lead and contribute to courageous conversations, to express their opinion and to play an active role on the board.
• Curious: possessing an enquiring mind and an analytical approach and understanding the value of meaningful questioning.
• Challenging: providing appropriate challenge to the status quo, not taking information or data at face value and always driving for improvement.
• Collaborative: prepared to listen to and work in partnership with others and understanding the importance of building strong working relationships within the board and with executive leaders, staff, parents and carers, pupils/students, the local community and employers.
• Critical: understanding the value of critical friendship which enables both challenge and support, and self-reflective, pursing learning and development opportunities to improve their own and whole board effectiveness.
• Creative: with an ability to challenge conventional wisdom and be open-minded about new approaches to problem-solving; recognising the value of innovation and creative thinking to organisational development and success.

We are particularly interested in hearing from candidates with strategic HR experience and/or audit and risk management experience. 

 A comprehensive articulation of the knowledge and skills we’re looking for can be found in the Department for Education publication Competency framework for governance available here: www.gov.uk/guidance/-governance-in-academy-trusts

What we offer:

Volunteering for a Trustee role is a good opportunity to develop your career and contribute your skills to a mission-driven organisation. This is an exciting time to join the Girls' Learning Trust, as we develop our new strategic plan for the next three years. 

Key Application Dates:

• Applications close: 12th May 2025 at 4pm
• Shortlisting: Week Commencing 12th May 2025
• Interviews: Week Commencing 2nd June 2025

Our commitment:

The Girls’ Learning Trust is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all volunteers to share this commitment. In order to meet this responsibility, we follow a rigorous selection process to discourage and screen out unsuitable applicants.

As well as verification of identity, we ask all Trustees to undertake an enhanced DBS disclosure. In line with Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) guidance, we may also conduct an online search about any shortlisted candidates as part of our due diligence to identify any matters that might relate directly to our legal duty to meet safeguarding duties in accordance with Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE)

We welcome applications from all suitably qualified people and aim to recruit a culturally diverse Board, which reflects the nature of our communities.