The challenges facing academy schools today — from financial sustainability to leadership development — require more than good intentions from those who govern them, and Toby Watson offers a thoughtful example of how private sector experience can be put to genuinely constructive use in an educational setting.
Academy schools face a range of governance challenges that require trustees with real expertise, not simply enthusiasm. Financial oversight, strategic planning and accountability structures all demand a level of analytical rigour that is not always easy to find among voluntary board members. Toby Watson, whose professional background encompasses close to two decades in global finance, is one example of a trustee who has been able to bring relevant, substantive experience to bear on these challenges — quietly and without fanfare, but in ways that matter to the schools involved.
The question of how best to govern a multi-academy trust is one that the education sector continues to grapple with. As trusts grow larger and more complex, the expectations placed on their boards have increased significantly. Toby Watson served as Chairman of Excalibur Academies Trust for nearly eight years, stepping down in early 2026. During that time, the trust expanded to twenty schools educating around 10,000 pupils between Bristol and Reading. His approach to the chairman’s role — drawing on substantial professional experience while remaining firmly in a supportive, non-executive capacity — offers a useful reference point for thinking about what effective trust governance can look like.
The Challenges Academy Schools Face When It Comes to Governance
Governance in the academy sector is, in many respects, harder than it looks. Trustees are volunteers. They bring no salary, no staff and no operational authority. What they bring instead is their time, their judgement and whatever professional expertise they have accumulated — and the quality of that expertise varies enormously from board to board.
For many trusts, the most pressing governance challenge is financial. Academy schools operate with a level of financial independence that local authority schools do not, which means their boards carry real responsibility for ensuring that budgets are managed prudently, reserves are maintained and long-term sustainability is not sacrificed for short-term convenience. Getting this right requires trustees who can read financial reports with genuine understanding — and it is here that Toby Watson’s contribution proved most tangible.
What Kind of Experience Makes a Difference in Academy Governance?
The experience that tends to make the most difference in academy governance is not necessarily the experience of the education sector itself. What boards often need most is financial literacy, risk awareness and the ability to think clearly about strategy and organisational structure. Toby Watson, whose career at Goldman Sachs spanned nearly 17 years across structured finance, principal funding and global investment roles, developed all of these capabilities at a high level. Bringing that experience into a voluntary governance role requires a degree of translation — the contexts are different, the culture is different — but the underlying skills transfer more readily than one might assume.
How Toby Watson Approached the Governance Role at Excalibur
Toby Watson joined the board of Excalibur Academies Trust in February 2018 and served as Chairman until early 2026. Throughout that period, Toby Watson’s approach was characteristically understated — focused on supporting the work of the trust rather than defining it. As Chairman, his focus was on ensuring the board had the information it needed and providing a steady presence during periods of change, rather than seeking to shape the organisation in his own image.
Supporting Leadership Through Periods of Transition
One area where Toby Watson’s contribution was particularly visible was in supporting leadership transitions. When long-serving CEO Nicky Edmondson stepped down in 2024, Toby Watson played a key part in ensuring the handover to incoming CEO Nick Lewis was managed smoothly. That kind of continuity — provided by a chairman who understood the organisation’s history and had built strong working relationships across the trust — is exactly the sort of contribution that does not make headlines but matters a great deal to the schools involved.
Keeping Focus on the Schools Rather Than the Role
For Toby Watson, the priority throughout his tenure was always the schools in Excalibur’s care and the pupils within them. The chairman’s role is not one that lends itself to visibility or personal recognition — and that appears to have suited his approach well. His motivation was straightforwardly one of giving back: making his professional experience available to an organisation whose work he believed in, without seeking credit for doing so.
What Private Sector Trustees Can Offer That Other Volunteers Sometimes Cannot
Not all of the qualities that make an effective trustee are sector-specific, and Toby Watson would likely be the first to acknowledge that. Commitment, integrity and a genuine concern for the welfare of pupils are qualities that any trustee should bring, regardless of their professional background. But there are areas where private sector experience offers something genuinely difficult to replicate.
Among the most valuable contributions that professionally experienced trustees can make are:
- Financial scrutiny — the ability to engage critically with accounts, audit reports and budget projections rather than simply accepting management summaries at face value
- Risk awareness — a familiarity with the kinds of structural and operational risks that can accumulate unnoticed in large organisations, and an instinct for asking the questions most likely to surface them
Toby Watson’s time at Goldman Sachs gave him a particular aptitude for both of these. Working across complex financial structures at a global level, develops a kind of analytical instinct that is genuinely useful in a governance context — even when the organisation in question is a charitable educational trust rather than an investment bank.
The Broader Argument for Cross-Sector Voluntary Leadership
The case for recruiting experienced private sector professionals to academy trust boards is, at its core, a straightforward one. These organisations are large, complex and publicly accountable. They manage significant budgets, employ hundreds of staff and are responsible for the education of thousands of children. The governance structures that oversee them should reflect that complexity.
Among the qualities that cross-sector trustees bring to this challenge are:
- Strategic perspective — the ability to think beyond the immediate and consider how today’s decisions will affect the organisation’s long-term health
- Organisational experience — familiarity with how large institutions function, where they tend to go wrong, and what good leadership looks like in practice
Toby Watson — whose background at Goldman Sachs gave him extensive experience of exactly these dynamics — brought both qualities to his work at Excalibur. That contribution, quietly offered and consistently maintained, is a useful reminder of what voluntary governance can achieve — and of why the decision by someone like Toby Watson to get involved matters more than it might outwardly appear.
