Trustee/Director

South Pennine Academies is a community of educational professionals who work together to provide support to drive educational improvement in schools. The trust empowers schools to deliver higher-quality education, foster innovation and achieve better outcomes for students. The trust has a reputation of turning struggling schools around.
It is committed to developing partnerships with its academies, the communities they serve and external organisations. Their academies are an integral part of their communities, and they value the diversity and opportunities this brings. Strong collaboration brings drive, expertise and capacity to the Trust and this allows their academies to flourish. By working collaboratively, they ensure that they provide the very best educational experience for students and give all the best possible chance to succeed.
The trust office is situated in Elland. Its academies are in Oldham, Halifax, Huddersfield, and Dewsbury. Many of the trust’s academies are in deprived areas.
The trust has 11 schools (3 secondary and 8 primary). They grew from the outstanding Moor End High School in Huddersfield which had its outstanding judgement reaffirmed at an inspection last summer. The trust’s 8 primaries are all (Ofsted) ‘good’ but they also took two secondaries which are particularly challenging. Waterhead Academy in Oldham has had a very difficult past and was made from the merger of two failing schools several years ago. The original trust struggled to support the school, and it was rebrokered to SPA in 2016. After a period showing some improvement, the school was moved back into special measures and the trust is now looking at the potential to move this school to another trust. In addition, the trust took on Park Lane High School in Halifax which had been in special measures for a while. Unlike Waterhead (which is a large, 1150 pupil school), Park Lane is a very small (430 pupil) school and has not been a local school of choice. The team have improved Park Lane and it achieved an RI judgement in autumn 2022 and is due for reinspection imminently. The work continues to secure the school to be at least good when it is next inspected. Both schools serve disadvantaged communities with Waterhead being very multicultural; both schools also had larger than normal proportions of children with special educational needs. The trust has around 850 staff across three local authority areas (Kirklees, Calderdale and Oldham). The staff serve over 5000 pupils aged 3-16.
The trust is in early discussion with other primaries about joining and whilst these conversations are in the early stages, they hope to add some schools to the trust within the next year. The trust has a strong track record in improving primary schools.
The trust also has two special units which support children with particular learning difficulties. Moor End Academy hosts a unit for Visually Impaired Pupils and Beaumont Primary Academy hosts a unit for children with social emotional and mental health challenges. These units allow children with particular special needs to have specialist support but spend the bulk of their time in mainstream classrooms. Inclusion is important for the Trust. For SEND students, there is a bespoke learning journey tailored to our students with additional needs and/or disabilities. The adaptive approach used in our academies ensures that all students, regardless of need or ability, are able to access a full and comprehensive curriculum.
There is a strong culture of safeguarding across the Trust. Compliancy and consistency across the Trust is ensured so that our most vulnerable students are receiving the best provision and support possible.

School improvement is seen as a collective responsibility and strong systems and structures support all their academies. The Trust’s approach to school improvement is based upon a shared vision and values centred around provision of an exceptional education for all their students. The trust works with academies at the different stages of their journey of continual self-improvement.
There is a strong culture of CPD and coaching for staff, with professional learning communities and research and evidence based approach. The trust has gone through a period of change following the retirement of the founding CEO and their long-term chair. The original Operations Director who was integral to growing the trust and establishing trust wide systems also retired. The trust currently has an interim CEO who is providing cover for the new substantive CEO while unwell. The trust chair also left at the same time and the new Ops Director and other new people are all in post and have become established.


Skills required have been identified as gaps on the board. The trust currently has a board of 9 trustees from a range of professional backgrounds. Three of the trustees are senior leaders from other strong trusts in the region and they also have one other experienced educationalists and thus education challenge and support is very strong. They also have others with strong business experience including finance, procurement and banking. The trust is keen to recruit a trustee with senior HR experience to provide greater challenge and support to the senior team including the trust’s in-house HR Director.
In addition, the trust are seeking a trustee to add to those currently on the board with finance expertise. It is not essential for this person to be a qualified accountant but should be familiar with business finance and able to read, understand and raise relevant questions about financial summaries, budgets and balance sheets. Alternatively this role could be filled by someone with a broad understanding of business risk management and business continuity. Someone with both finance and risk management skills could be ideal.
The trust had an external review of governance in March 2024 and whilst this was found to be strong, they have taken on board a number of recommendations to streamline their governance procedures and make committees more effective. They are currently reviewing their approaches to local governance and new trustees would be involved in how the new governance structure might look.

Candidates need to be able to commit to the role, have some flexibility to be able to fit the role into their busy lives, and be willing to get involved and be ambitious for our academies and their students. We are a group of people working together who share the same values, wanting the best for our staff, and for our students, whatever their starting point, to achieve the best possible outcomes
The Board meets 4 times a year; once before the October half term to review the previous year’s results and affirm strategy and then once each term (Dec, Mar, July). All meetings are held on Tuesdays but the trust are trialling different start times, most of which are towards the end of normal office hours.
Meetings are held at the trust HQ in Elland just off the M62 (HX5 9DX) but it is possible to join the meetings remotely providing volunteers can make occasional face-to-face meetings. Consequently, most board meetings are hybrid with some attending physically and others attending via video.
The board then has two main committees that look in detail at the Quality of Education (QofE) and Finance, Audit, Resources & Risk (FARR).
QofE meet 4 times a year – Sept, Jan, May and June. Meetings start at 4pm and are ALL held online using video conferencing.
FARR meet 3 times a year – Nov, Feb and June. Meetings start at 5:30pm and are ALL held online using video conferencing
Generally all meetings are up to 2 hours long. Trustees will be required to read documents in advance of meetings and as a general rule, they are expected to devote an average of about 6-7 hours a month to trust business but apart from scheduled meetings, the bulk of this can be managed remotely at the volunteer’s convenience.
Trustees are normally required to attend Board meetings and ONE committee (QofE or FARR).
Occasionally (once or twice a year) the board create an additional Remuneration Committee to look at pay policies and deal with the CEO’s performance management. This could be an extra requirement for some trustees.

Establishment Information

• Address: South Pennine Academies Business & Training Centre, The Gateway, Lowfields Close, Lowfields Business Park, Elland HX5 9DX
• Website: https://www.southpennineacademies.org/
• Type of establishment: Multi-academy trust
• Usual start time of meeting: 4 per academic year + AGM Dates/times for 2024/25: 15/10/2024 at 5.30pm 10/12/2024 at 4.00pm 25/03/2025 at 9.00am 08/07/2025 at 4.00pm AGM 29/04/25 at 5.30pm