Using this guidance

What you need to know about legal requirements, the 5 pillars of academy trust quality and resources from third parties.

In this guidance:

  • must is a legal or regulatory requirement or duty which must be complied with
  • should is the minimum good practice which should be applied (unless it can be demonstrated that an alternative approach better suits the circumstances)

Where neither a must or should is used, the content refers to a generally held view of high-quality governance.

Additional governance expectations or arrangements may be in place for specific groups of academies, for example by diocesan authorities, academy sponsors or multi-academy trusts (MATs). This guidance refers to them where relevant, but does not aim to cover them comprehensively.

The 5 pillars of academy trust quality

As part of the guidance on Commissioning high quality trusts, the Department for Eduaction (DfE) published 5 pillars of academy trust quality.

Annex A: trust quality descriptions sets out the 5 pillars of academy trust quality. The trust quality descriptions cover:

  1. High-quality and inclusive education

  2. School improvement

  3. Workforce

  4. Finance and operations

  5. Governance and leadership

This guidance has been structured around the governance and leadership pillar.