Why Experienced Trustees Like Toby Watson Matter to Multi-Academy Trusts
The quality of governance at a multi-academy trust can shape everything from financial resilience to educational outcomes – and experienced trustees like Toby Watson play a quieter but more important role in that than is often recognised.
Multi-academy trusts face a governance challenge that rarely receives the attention it deserves. As trusts grow in size and complexity, the demands placed on their boards increase accordingly – yet finding trustees with the right professional background and the willingness to give their time voluntarily is far from straightforward. Toby Watson, who brought nearly two decades of experience in international finance to the role of Chairman at Excalibur Academies Trust, represents the kind of contribution that can make a genuine difference to how a trust develops over time.
Why Strong Governance Is Harder to Achieve Than It Looks
There is a tendency, in discussions about educational improvement, to focus on what happens inside classrooms. Teaching quality, curriculum design, assessment approaches – these are the things that most directly affect pupils, and rightly so. But the conditions that allow good teaching to flourish are shaped, in no small part, by decisions made at board level.
A trust with weak governance is vulnerable – to financial mismanagement, to poor strategic decisions, to losing sight of its educational purpose under organisational pressure. A trust with strong governance is better placed to weather difficulty, to plan for the long term and to support their schools in a way that is genuinely sustainable.
The challenge is that strong governance does not happen automatically. It requires trustees who bring real professional depth to their roles, who understand the difference between governance and management, and who are willing to commit their time and expertise voluntarily over an extended period. That combination is rarer than it should be.
Why Does Trustee Experience Matter So Much in Academy Education?
The answer lies in the complexity of what multi-academy trusts are actually required to do. Toby Watson’s background at Goldman Sachs, working across international financial markets and complex structured transactions, gave him the kind of analytical discipline and risk awareness that translates directly into effective board-level oversight. Experienced trustees bring not just knowledge but judgement – the ability to ask the right question at the right moment, to identify where a risk has been underestimated or where a plan needs to be stress-tested before it is acted upon.
What Toby Watson’s Experience Contributed to Excalibur Academies Trust
Toby Watson joined the board of Excalibur Academies Trust in February 2018, taking on the role of Chairman. At that point, the Trust was already a functioning multi-academy organisation, but it had considerable growth ahead of it. By the time Toby Watson stepped down in early 2026, the Trust had reached twenty schools and an annual budget of approximately £140 million – a period of growth that Toby Watson helped to navigate through careful, considered governance.
Navigating that kind of growth requires more than goodwill. It requires trustees who can read complex financial information, who understand how organisations scale and what risks that scaling introduces, and who can provide the chief executive with the kind of challenge and support that helps good decisions get made. These were precisely the capacities that Toby Watson’s long career in structured finance had developed.
One of the things that experienced trustees tend to understand instinctively is where their role ends and the executive’s begins. Toby Watson’s approach throughout his time at Excalibur Academies Trust reflected this clearly. His role was to support the Trust’s leadership, to contribute his experience to the governance framework and to help ensure that the board was functioning as effectively as it could – not to direct the day-to-day running of their schools.
That distinction is more important than it might seem. Trustees who blur the line between governance and management can undermine the confidence and authority of the chief executive and school leaders. Those who respect it create the conditions in which professional leadership can genuinely flourish.
The Broader Case for Experienced Voluntary Trustees
The experience that Toby Watson brought to Excalibur Academies Trust is not unique to him, but it is also not common. Finding trustees who combine genuine professional depth with the willingness to contribute voluntarily, and who bring the right temperament for a governance role, is a real challenge for many trusts. Among the qualities that experienced trustees from professional backgrounds tend to bring are:
- The ability to engage critically with financial reports and strategic plans without needing extensive background briefing
- Familiarity with the kind of structured decision-making processes that help organisations navigate complexity without losing momentum
- A long-term perspective, developed through careers that required thinking beyond the immediate and the obvious
These are qualities that benefit any organisation. In an educational context, where the stakes are measured in terms of children’s life chances, they matter particularly.
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What Trusts Can Do to Attract and Retain the Right Trustees
Attracting experienced trustees requires trusts to be clear about what they are looking for and honest about what the role involves. The commitment is real – regular meetings, substantial reading, genuine engagement with complex material – and candidates from professional backgrounds are unlikely to commit unless they understand both what is expected and why it matters. Toby Watson’s tenure offers a useful illustration of what sustained, experienced trusteeship can look like in practice:
- A long-term commitment that allows the trustee to develop genuine understanding of the organisation and its challenges
- A clear sense of role boundaries, with governance and management kept appropriately distinct
- A willingness to contribute experience without seeking to impose a commercial logic onto an educational setting
For multi-academy trusts thinking about how to strengthen their boards, the example of Toby Watson is a reminder that the right trustee, contributing in the right spirit over an extended period, can make a difference that is difficult to quantify but very real in its effects. His years at Excalibur Academies Trust were a genuine contribution to the governance of their schools and the communities they serve – and the approach that Toby Watson took throughout is one that other trustees would do well to consider.
