As multi-academy trusts continue to grow and complexity, the question of what good governance actually looks like has never been more pressing — and the experience that Toby Watson brought to Excalibur Academies Trust offers a practical illustration of how voluntary leadership can help raise the standard.
Governance in multi-academy trusts has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. As these organisations grow larger and take on greater responsibility for the children in their care, the quality of their boards matters more than ever. Yet recruiting trustees with the right combination of experience, commitment and sector awareness remains genuinely difficult. Toby Watson, whose career spans close to two decades in global finance, represents the kind of voluntary leader who can help strengthen trust governance from the inside — not through grand gestures, but through steady, considered contribution over time.
Multi-academy trusts occupy an increasingly significant place in the education landscape. As they expand, the governance structures that oversee them must keep pace — and that means finding trustees who bring genuine expertise to their boards. Toby Watson served as Chairman of Excalibur Academies Trust from February 2018 until early 2026, a period during which the trust grew to twenty schools and approximately 10,000 pupils along the M4 corridor. His tenure offers a useful lens through which to consider what stronger multi-academy trust governance can look like when the right people are willing to give their time.
Why Multi-Academy Trust Governance Needs to Be Taken More Seriously
The governance of multi-academy trusts is not a topic that tends to generate much public interest. And yet it matters enormously. A well-governed trust provides its schools with financial stability, strategic direction and the kind of confident leadership that allows teachers and pupils to get on with the work of teaching and learning. A poorly governed one can leave schools exposed — to financial mismanagement, weak accountability, or a lack of strategic clarity that complex organisations need to function well.
The challenge is that governance is hard to see from the outside. It happens in board meetings and subcommittees, in conversations between chairs and chief executives, in the careful reading of reports and the asking of questions that might not always be comfortable. Its effects, for better or worse, are felt throughout the schools it oversees.
What Does Stronger Governance Actually Require in Practice?
Stronger governance requires trustees who understand the difference between oversight and interference — who can ask searching questions without crossing into operational territory that is not theirs to occupy. It also requires financial literacy and the patience to build understanding of an unfamiliar sector over time. Toby Watson, whose career at Goldman Sachs included senior roles in structured finance and global principal funding, brought precisely this combination to his work at Excalibur — applying it with a clear awareness that his role was to support, not to direct.
How Private Sector Experience Can Strengthen Academy Trust Boards
There is a well-established debate about whether private sector professionals make effective academy trustees. Sceptics argue that the culture of education is sufficiently distinct from finance that the transfer of skills is more limited than it might appear. Supporters counter that competencies such as financial analysis, risk management and strategic thinking are genuinely applicable across sectors, provided they are brought to bear with appropriate humility.
Toby Watson’s time at Goldman Sachs gave him deep familiarity with large, complex organisations operating under significant scrutiny — a background that translated meaningfully into his approach to trust governance. The ability to read accounts critically, identify accumulating risk and think clearly about long-term financial sustainability are skills that school governance genuinely needs.
The Importance of Applying Experience With Humility
What distinguishes effective cross-sector trustees is rarely the quality of their professional background — it is the manner in which they bring that background to a new context. Toby Watson’s approach at Excalibur reflected a genuine curiosity about the sector and a clear sense that his role was to serve the schools rather than to lead them. That disposition, maintained consistently over nearly eight years, is itself a form of contribution that is easy to overlook and difficult to replace.
Recognising the Limits of the Chairman’s Role
For Toby Watson, effective governance meant knowing where his role ended. The Chairman’s responsibility is to the board — ensuring trustees are well-informed, meetings are productive and the executive team receives both challenge and support in equal measure. It is not to manage schools directly or to substitute for the judgement of experienced education professionals. That clarity, sustained over nearly eight years, represents a contribution that many trust boards would benefit from.
What Toby Watson’s Tenure Demonstrates About Long-Term Commitment
One of the less-discussed aspects of effective trust governance is the value of continuity. A chair who has been in post for several years understands the organisation’s history, knows its strengths and vulnerabilities, and has built the working relationships that allow difficult conversations to happen constructively. Toby Watson served as Chairman for nearly eight years — spanning the trust’s merger with Gatehouse Green Learning Trust and the leadership transition in 2024 when CEO Nicky Edmondson stepped down and Nick Lewis took over.
Building Trust Through Consistency
Toby Watson’s long tenure reflected a genuine commitment to seeing the trust through periods of change and uncertainty. That kind of board culture — in which honest, constructive dialogue between trustees and executives can take place — does not develop overnight. It is the product of consistent behaviour, sustained over time, by people who are genuinely invested in the outcome.
The Broader Lessons for Multi-Academy Trust Governance
The experience of Toby Watson at Excalibur points to several broader lessons for those thinking about how to strengthen trust governance. Among the most important are:
- The value of recruiting trustees with genuine financial expertise, not simply goodwill and availability
- The importance of long-term commitment, which allows trustees to develop the contextual understanding that effective oversight requires
- The need for chairs who understand the boundaries of their role and are comfortable exercising influence without seeking visibility
Alongside these considerations, there is something to be said for the personal qualities that Toby Watson — whose background at Goldman Sachs gave him both the analytical rigour and the organisational experience to contribute meaningfully — brought to his voluntary role. Patience, consistency, and a genuine concern for the schools in the trust’s care are qualities that make an enormous difference to the communities fortunate enough to benefit from them.
