Mentoring for trust leaders and chairs | Confederation of School Trusts

Tailored strategic support for your leadership

Leading a trust is a relatively new, and still evolving role. It can also seem a lonely one - executive leaders and chairs deal with confidential issues and critical problems that it can be difficult to share.

CST’s mentoring services give executive leaders and trust chairs personalised strategic support from system-leading experts. Our mentors have direct experience of growing and developing school trusts at scale. This enables them to share powerful insights on leadership and engage proven models and strong networks to support their mentees. As a result, our mentoring partnerships develop your personal skills and journey as a leader and support the formation and delivery of trust vision, strategy and outcomes.

We established our mentoring services because we believe that it is essential that those leading our school trusts can access appropriate support to sustain all stages of their careers, particularly as new and growing leaders. The opportunity to have a trusted sounding board for personal, professional, and strategic decision-making over a sustained period, especially across a time of change, can be transformative. Investing in the personal development of executives and trust chairs benefits individual effectiveness and resilience, something fundamental to the performance and culture of strong trusts.

We are proud to support experienced and new leaders, and those aspiring to leadership, in trusts of all sizes and contexts. Our support is highly flexible and completely personal. Our core mentoring services are detailed here but we are happy to explore other options on request.

Trust and confidentiality

The relationship between mentor and mentee is clearly defined, professional, and strategic. It’s underpinned by a mentoring agreement that sets out the expectations of each party and is characterised by open and honest exchange. The partnership, and any work created within it, is also highly confidential. Your mentor will not provide any feedback to your trust without your consent.

Choosing your mentor

Creating mentoring partnerships begins with a conversation with CST to explore your needs and expectations. If you’d like to explore further, we arrange a conversation with one or more mentors whose values and experience are potentially a good fit with yours. These are open, no-obligation conversations to explore fit and chemistry.

Mentoring options

Mentoring for school trust executive leaders

Our mentoring partnerships are typically delivered over eight days, or equivalent time, across a year. Your mentor will focus on understanding your opportunities, ambitions, experience, and context at the start of the relationship so that conversations can be grounded in your reality and explore highly focused and relevant actions. The partnership then develops across a series of regular face-to-face meetings. These establish a deep bond of trust and give you the time and space to address thorny issues in depth. Mentors and mentees also typically keep in touch between meetings and further ad hoc conversations take place on request.

The agenda for each mentoring partnership will be different for each CEO and led by them. Meetings are scheduled and prepared to maximise value, and mentoring conversations will be goal-oriented and informed by established models and frameworks. In their work with you, your mentor will help you to turn your burning issues into a strategy for your trust and help to strengthen your leadership as you enact it.

We recognise mentoring is a personal relationship, and we offer initial no-obligation conversations to explore fit and chemistry with one or more suggested mentors. Similarly, while most of our mentoring partnerships are established for a year to give you time to formulate strategies and put them into action, we recognise that for leaders managing mergers and growth a longer period may be beneficial.

The first year’s fee is £7,200+VAT for CST members, and £7,950+VAT for non members, plus travel expenses. If you choose to extend the partnership, the subsequent year’s fee is by agreement, reflecting the duration and frequency of your mentoring meetings.

Preparing for school trust leadership

Becoming the chief executive of a school trust for the first time can be a significant step change, whatever your background. The mentoring support that we offer those preparing for trust leadership will help you to navigate that change across approximately six-months, from the time of your appointment to the end of your first term in post. Support is offered across four days, or equivalent time across the length of the mentorship.

Our mentoring partnership matches you with an experienced system leader across this pivotal period, to accelerate all aspects of your new leadership from analysis to action, including establishing key relationships within your organisation and building trust with stakeholders in the communities that your schools serve. The opportunity to work with a highly-experienced and trusted sounding board will enable you to go further faster, helping you to settle into your new role with confidence and clarity.

Your mentoring focus in this period will be unique to you, reflecting whether you already belong to the trust that you are preparing to lead or stepping into it for the first time.

Topics you may choose to cover in this partnership could include:

Becoming the accounting officer
Understanding culture and building relational trust with staff
Establishing an effective partnership with your chair
Dialogue with your Department for Education Regional Director’s office
Developing and testing your analysis of trust’s improvement journey
Maximising your new leadership platform
Expanding your professional network

Our fee for this service is £3,600+VAT for CST members and £3,975+VAT for non-members, plus travel expenses. The partnership can be extended for a further six or 12 months.

Mentoring for school trust chairs

School trust chairs have a crucial but often difficult role, needing to be engaged but not operational and balancing demands from a wide range of stakeholders. As the lead trustee of the charity, the role can carry heavy responsibility.

Our one-to-one mentoring for trust chairs is designed to help this. Your mentor will look at the structure of your trust in theory, as well as in practice - including observing a trust board meeting, to gain a fuller understanding of the trust board dynamics, culture, and relationships with key strategic partners such as the governance professional, chief executive, and other trustees.

The partnership is typically delivered over five days, or equivalent time, across a year. Meetings are scheduled and prepared to maximise value.

The first year’s fee is £3,575+VAT for CST members, and £4,400+VAT for non-members, plus expenses for meetings that are carried out in person. The subsequent year’s fee is by agreement, reflecting the duration and frequency of your mentoring meetings.

Issued-led mentoring for school trust chairs

Chairing a school trust is not a static role. The demands of the position can change over time, offering new challenges and opportunities for the trust's leadership. We have developed this mentoring service to provide confidential and impartial support needed during these times.

Our team of mentors have a breadth of experience in navigating issues including:

trust growth and mergers
succession planning
change management
trustee conduct and disciplinary matters
managing a whistleblowing process
responding to a notice to improve
mending difficult relationships and building trust

The mentoring focus is unique to each mentorship. Meetings provide an opportunity to reflect in a safe space, to assess risks, sound out ideas, and develop strategies to move forwards.

This support is initially offered across three days, or 21 hours of elapsed time. There will be an opportunity to extend this beyond the initial period should the need arise.

Our fee for this service is £2,145+VAT for CST members and £2,640+VAT for non-members, plus travel expenses.

The CST mentoring process has been incredibly powerful professional development throughout my time so far as CEO. My mentor, who is experienced, knowledgeable and successful in the education sector has been a superb guide, and CST has made the process extremely simple. I cannot recommend the programme highly enough.

New chief executive in a 10-school trust