Leadership & Governance

• We have developed a Trust structure which is properly representative of all members and stakeholders, will represent external partners appropriately and will enable all of our schools to be represented equitably. All of this is overseen by the Trust Board. The diagram below represents the relationships in the Trust between the membership, the Trust schools and their Governing Bodies and the Trust’s initial additional partners.
• The Trust Board’s remit is to ensure the Cooperative values are maintained and developed through the work of the Alliance action plan and to strategically develop 2 way partnerships. As a charitable Trust our Board ensures that they comply with charity and company law requirements.
• The HT steering group has the role of providing a clear focus on improvement across all Alliance Trust schools, and doing some of the background work more suited to a smaller group discussion, before being brought to either the Trust Board or the HT Network. The HT steering group is elected by the HT Network, ensuring representation from both Whitstable and Herne Bay, and from Infant, Junior and Secondary schools.
• The HT Network is made up of all the CACoT schools’ Headteachers. The purpose of this is to provide collaborative support for HTs in overcoming local challenges to raising achievement.
• We have established a Children and Parents Trust Forum, representing parents, staff and the local community. This Forum helps to hold the Trust to account, and to shape policies. Children also have a voice through representatives from individual School Councils, and some of these have attended Board meetings to share their views with the Board.

Leadership Structure

As a democratic organisation, the majority of our posts are elected positions, with limits of tenure, succession planning and equal and fair representation to ensure this. Outside of the meetings, the work of the trust is conducted by the Chair and Vice Chair of the Trust Board, who also chair the  HT Steering Group and HT Network Meetings, all of whom are supported by a CACoT administrator (supporting the Trust Board, including clerking) and the Alliance Business Manager (dealing with all financial matters and providing financial reports to the Trust Board). The trust does not have any employees as those in these roles are released by their schools to do this work, who in turn are compensated for this, or are used on a consultancy basis.