Job Description
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Job title: Chief Executive Officer and Trust Accounting Officer
Salary: Leadership scale 25 to 30 (England)
Contract type: Full time Permanent Flexible working opportunities are available
Reporting to: The Board of Trustees at The Brickfields Trust
Responsible for: The trust central team. Heads of Schools and senior school staff
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is also the Accounting Officer of the trust.
The CEO has responsibility for informing and supporting the work of the board - including the board's setting of the trust's vision and strategy. The CEO is responsible for delivering the agreed strategy; overseeing all operations of the trust - including enabling educational and organisational improvement at scale; ensuring sustainability, compliance, and the mitigation of risk; and building strategic partnerships with a range of stakeholders to ensure both strong educational outcomes for pupils and the sustainable development of the trust.
The CEO will be accountable to the trust board for;
• Leading and overseeing the efficient, effective and compliant management of the trust and its member academies
• Providing strong strategic leadership towards the trust's vision and goals
• The performance of all academies within the trust
• The safeguarding of children across the trust
Qualities
The CEO will:
• Uphold public trust in trust leadership and maintain high standards of ethics, behaviour and professional conduct, by modelling the Seven Principles of Public Life
• Build positive and respectful relationships across the trust and its wider community
• Promote the qualities, principles and successes of the trust both within and beyond the education sector
• Serve in the best interests of the trust's pupils, staff and stakeholders
Duties and responsibilities
The duties and responsibilities listed below are indicative of the tasks the CEO will perform and are not intended to be an exhaustive list. The post holder will be expected to take on additional responsibilities appropriate to the role as they arise.
1. Strategic leadership and development of the trust
The Chief Executive Officer leads through:
• Articulating a clear narrative for the organisation's growth and development - based on the board's vision and reflecting the trust's definition of a high-quality education.
• Developing a clear organisational strategy and goals (created with the board) that reflects the board's vision and the CEO's leadership narrative.
• Providing dynamic, motivational and inspirational leadership at all levels of the organisation.
• Undertaking regular and meaningful engagement with staff (at all levels), stakeholders and end-users to both share the narrative and to inform and refine it where appropriate.
• Identifying opportunities to communicate the leadership narrative - externally and internally - through speeches, blogs, media (including social media), external meetings and otherwise.
• Accessing opportunities to develop and stretch their own thinking by engaging with thought-leaders, sector specific and wider research and trend analysis, and appropriate professional development. This informs their ongoing work on strategy.
• Ensuring a healthy balance between central strategy and accountability, and the ability of each school to develop a sufficient sense of individuality and ability to respond to local needs.
• Modelling and actively promoting commitment to the trust's values and, more broadly, commitment to ethical governance, leadership, and practice across the organisation. The CEO adheres to and embodies the Framework for Ethical Leadership in Education and the Seven Principles of Public Life (The Nolan Principles).
• Identifying opportunities to celebrate and share practice within the trust that contribute to furthering the trust's vision, values and strategy.
• Lead the growth and development of the trust, including due diligence and supporting converting schools
2. Build an open, transparent and effective relationship with the governing board and its committees
The Chief Executive Officer leads through:
• Investing sufficient time in developing relationships with the board; including regularly meeting with the Chair and keeping them informed of key developments, successes, risks and challenges.
• Ensuring they and the executive team have developed clear and appropriate reporting mechanisms that contribute to efficient governance of the trust.
• Welcoming accountability from the board and robust performance management, while encouraging the board to discharge this across all aspects of organisational delivery and performance.
• Embracing the support and advice of the board, recognising the value of good governance.
• Supporting the board to meet their duties as company directors and as trustees of a charitable body, working with the board to ensure operational compliance and fulfilment of all statutory responsibilities.
• Ensuring there is no overlap in the work and responsibilities of the executive team, and those of committees and local governing bodies; ensuring awareness of and adherence to the scheme of delegation.
3. Be accountable for all aspects of school improvement, quality of education and pupil outcomes across the trust
The Chief Executive Officer leads through:
• Providing a compelling narrative around improvement priorities and what is valued or considered to be success, aligned with the trust's vision and the CEO's leadership narrative.
• Providing strategic direction and leadership for teaching and learning across the trust, especially in response to sector changes or changes to government policy
• Overseeing school-to-school support across the trust
• Commissioning external support for trust and academy improvement, and assess the effectiveness and impact of the support provided
• Ensuring effective identification, resourcing and provision is in place for pupils with SEND
• Fostering a culture of 'collective commitment' to all the trust's schools among senior team members and more broadly across the trust's Heads, leaders, and staff.
• Ensuring quality curriculum, teaching and assessment of pupil learning across the trust both through central systems and through the clear setting of standards and expectations across all schools.
• Ensuring that their role is about enabling improvement at scale and as an organisational habit
• Ensuring that the data captured is consistent with the organisation's view of success, relevant, timely, triangulated and used formatively and actively to inform ongoing improvement both across the wider organisation and in individual schools.
• That the systems and processes that define the scalable improvement model - including project and process management - ensure that improvement becomes 'an organisational habit' and that staff at all levels feel empowered to inform and contribute towards improvement where possible.
• Fostering a culture of disciplined innovation, where staff are empowered to engage in external and/or internal research and development activity that furthers the organisation's vision and strategy and ensures that specialist staff stay at 'the cutting edge'.
• Ensuring a deep commitment to safeguarding and compliance with safeguarding responsibilities across the trust, through effective leadership, training, systems and monitoring both centrally and in all schools.
4. Ensure that the organisation is an 'employer of choice' and is staffed by talented and skilled individuals at all levels
The Chief Executive Officer leads through:
• Building and developing an executive team of experts - across a range of appropriate disciplines - through whom they can adequately develop and deliver strategy and ensure organisational delivery, improvement and compliance across the trust's operations.
• Head hunting and recruiting talented and sufficiently skilled and experienced people to senior leadership positions within the organisation, ensuring a commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion in doing so.
• Line management of the senior executive leadership team and Heads of Schools and through them ensuring high performance and effectiveness across each aspect of the trust's operations.
• Confidently and sensitively addressing underperformance or behaviours that are inconsistent with the values and culture the organisation stands for.
• Demonstrating a commitment to developing leaders and ensuring a succession planning strategy is in place both across the senior executive team and for Heads and key specialist leaders across the trust.
• Establishing an 'employer of choice' culture, with a strong sense of purpose, commitment to talent management and development, sustainable workload, flexibility, and other key employment benefits. The CEO models a positive and sustainable workplace culture.
• Fostering a cultural and operational commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion in order to thrive; setting an example from the top down and acting as a catalyst for achieving inclusion at all levels.
• Bringing about organisational change and improvement through a careful approach to engaging and involving staff, ensuring a 'done with' rather than 'done to' model where possible.
5. Secures organisational sustainability and compliance
The Chief Executive Officer leads through:
• Discharging their financial responsibilities as accounting officer, including ensuring financial compliance, robust checks and balances, a commitment to achieving value for money, and financial probity at all times across the organisation.
• Working with the Chief Financial Officer to ensure that the trust's strategy is supported by effective, responsive and integrated central services, as well as high-quality operational delivery across all schools.
• Engaging the board on sustainability issues, including strategic discussions and decisions as to how to invest resources to best serve the trust's medium to long-term needs and ensure value for money over time.
• Encouraging an 'investor' culture, whereby the organisation takes a strategic and long-term view as to where returns can be achieved that both reduce cost and improve quality.
• Seeking economies of scale, not simply through scaled procurement, but also through a culture where internal talent is maximised, and resources are deployed strategically - saving on external costs and building internal capacity in doing so.
• Building relationships with other local and regional MATs to share expertise, resources and to embark on shared procurement where appropriate.
• Developing a culture that values, encourages, and ensures compliance for volunteerism, fundraising and sustainable income generation to further enhance the educational offer for pupils and contributes to improved outcomes.
• Ensuring that risk management systems and compliance monitoring systems are in place so that the organisation can anticipate and plan for risks and fulfil all its statutory duties and responsibilities.
6. Builds external relationships: fostering social and professional capital
The Chief Executive Officer leads through:
• Creating a sense of openness and proactive engagement with local, regional and national stakeholders, prioritising external relationships with reference to strategy and potential impact.
• Steering the organisation to engage with and embark on relationships that will add sufficient value to the organisation and pupils' educational experience, while avoiding collaborative overload and ensuring there are mutual benefits for all involved.
• Encouraging the board to play their part in building and maintaining key stakeholder relationships, while also ensuring their impact on pupils and benefits of all external partnerships are demonstrable and relate sufficiently to core business.
• Building constructive relationships with politicians and civil servants; communicating in a way that engages key influencers and ensures they remain informed about the organisation's work and progress.
• Accessing peer-to-peer networks (within and across sectors) that are relevant and add value to the CEO and the senior team's professional development.
• Working with the board to generate a culture of 'pure accountability' to communities - including staff, parents and pupils - that ensures the trust is openly committed to understanding and meeting their general needs and expectations over time.
• Contributing to the development of the wider sector through taking part in the work of sector bodies and engaging in appropriate opportunities to inform the development of other trusts and to inform government policy.
Accounting Officer's responsibilities
The Chief Executive Officer is the accounting officer of the academy trust. The responsibilities and duties of the accounting officer are set out in the Academy Trust Handbook 2024.
What does the accounting officer do
1.31 The accounting officer role includes specific responsibilities for financial matters. It includes a personal responsibility to Parliament and to ESFA's accounting officer for the trust's financial resources.
1.32 Accounting officers must be able to assure Parliament and the public of high standards of probity in the management of public funds, particularly regularity, propriety and value for money.
1.33 Accounting officers must adhere to The Seven Principles of Public Life.
1.34 The accounting officer must have oversight of financial transactions, by:
• ensuring the academy trust's property and assets are under the trustees' control and measures exist to prevent losses or misuse
• ensuring bank accounts, financial systems and financial records are operated by more than one person
• keeping full and accurate accounting records to support their annual accounts.
The accounting officer's annual statement
1.35 The accounting officer must complete and sign a statement on regularity, propriety and compliance each year and submit this to ESFA with the audited accounts. The accounting officer must also demonstrate how the trust has secured value for money in the governance statement in the audited accounts.
The accounting officer's duty to raise concerns
1.36 The accounting officer must take personal responsibility (which must not be delegated) for assuring the board that there is compliance with the funding agreement and handbook.
1.37 The accounting officer must advise the board in writing, if action it is considering is incompatible with the articles, funding agreement or handbook.
1.38 Similarly, the accounting officer must advise the board in writing, if the board fails to act where required by the funding agreement or handbook. Where the board is minded to proceed, despite the accounting officer's advice, the accounting officer must consider the board's reasons and, if the accounting officer still considers the action proposed by the board is in breach of the articles, the funding agreement or handbook, the accounting officer must notify ESFA's accounting officer immediately in writing.
For further information on the role, please refer to the attached candidate information pack or contact enquiries@brickfields.org
Information about the School
The Brickfields Trust currently consists of 4 Primary Academies, Great Wakering Primary, Barling Magna Primary, Lawford Mead Primary & Nursery and Kings Road Primary