Trust FAQs

The Trustee Recruitment Service will undertake light-touch vetting of candidates in the form of online searches, Companies House disqualification checks, and cross-referencing of publicly-available records. It is strongly recommended that trust undertake usual Safer Recruiting processes in line with usual recruitment protocol, including Enhanced CRB and reference checking. All responsibility for appointment and associated checking remains with the trust.

In short: no. There is no obligation to appoint any candidate. The work conducted by the Trustee Recruitment Service will identify strong, suitable candidates that we believe are a good match for your requirements and who will be capable of being a high-calibre member of your board. We recognise, however, that sometimes a good personal fit or rapport isn’t achieved and therefore we may need to search a little further. Where this is the case, we request your open, frank, and honest feedback on candidates to inform our ongoing processes and records.

While we may be able to help identify people with education-specific knowledge and experience, most of the volunteers we share will be from a corporate background and thus will not necessarily possess prior knowledge of the education sector. This is, we believe, an advantage when independent-thinking, ‘fresh-eyes’, and scrutiny, without preconceptions, is necessary – which is ‘always’, on a healthy and effective trust board! Such candidates typically possess enquiring minds, are quick to assimilate information, and are used to operating in a fast-paced environment, all of which means they can quickly get up to speed on any education-specific jargon and challenges. Please be aware that where education specialists are required, this may result in a longer recruitment cycle to enable the Trustee Recruitment Service team to conduct thorough searching via non-standard channels.

The Trustee Recruitment Service is not responsible for induction, training, or on-boarding activity of candidates. While each appointed volunteer will receive access to training resources and online learning modules to support their governance journey, this is supplementary to training and induction provided by the trust. We recommend training on understanding education-specific data, internal processes, and any other knowledge required for the role is provided by the trust as soon as possible after induction.

We welcome chance to discuss with you the requirements at your SAT and the specifics of the recruitment activity you’ll be undertaking. No two pieces of activity are the same, so in some cases the TRS can be an ideal route to meeting your need. Email us on trusteer[email protected] to discuss in more detail.

Definitely! We welcome expressions of interest from anyone keen to volunteer their time and expertise as a trustee and are particularly keen to hear from anyone with senior leadership experience in the education sector.

Please visit the ‘Apply to become a trustee’ page on our website https://governorsforschools.org.uk/volunteers/apply-trustee