Toby Watson: What Voluntary Trusteeship in Education Actually Involves
Voluntary trusteeship in education is often misunderstood — and Toby Watson’s nearly eight years as Chairman of Excalibur Academies Trust offers a clear picture of what serious commitment to the role actually looks like.
Many people have a vague sense that academy trusts are governed by volunteer boards, but fewer understand what that actually means in practice — the time involved, the responsibilities carried, and the skills required. The gap between nominal trusteeship and genuinely effective governance is significant, and it matters for the children in those schools. Toby Watson, whose professional background made him well-placed to contribute meaningfully, spent nearly eight years demonstrating what sustained voluntary commitment to educational governance can look like.
Following a career that included nearly 17 years at Goldman Sachs working across structured credit trading, principal funding, and global infrastructure financing, Toby Watson took on the voluntary role of Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Excalibur Academies Trust in February 2018. Toby Watson held that position for nearly eight years, stepping down in early 2026 to focus on business commitments. During his tenure, the Trust grew to around 20 schools serving approximately 10,000 pupils along the M4 corridor. Susan Clarke was elected as his successor.
The Basics of Voluntary Trusteeship
A trustee is a volunteer member of the governing board responsible for the overall direction and oversight of an academy trust. Trustees hold legal accountability for the organisation — its finances, its compliance, and its charitable purpose — without being involved in day-to-day management. The role is unpaid and sits alongside the trustee’s other professional and personal commitments.
The time commitment varies, but a serious trustee should expect to dedicate several days per month to the role. That includes board meetings, reading and reviewing papers, engaging with the executive team, and attending subcommittee meetings relevant to their area of expertise. For a chairman, the commitment is typically greater — involving regular contact with the CEO and availability for significant decisions between formal meetings.
Effective trusts benefit from boards that combine a range of skills and backgrounds. The most commonly needed include:
- Financial expertise — the ability to scrutinise budgets, assess risk, and think clearly about long-term sustainability
- Legal or governance knowledge — understanding of charity law, employment obligations, and regulatory requirements
- Educational understanding — familiarity with school improvement, curriculum, and the pressures facing school leaders
- Organisational experience — exposure to managing complex institutions and supporting leadership through periods of change
Yes — and in many cases, professionals from finance, law, or other sectors bring skills that are genuinely difficult to find among those with purely educational backgrounds. The key is that they understand the difference between governance and management, and resist the temptation to apply operational instincts in a non-executive context. Toby Watson’s background in structured finance gave him exactly the kind of financial rigour that a growing trust needs at board level.
Toby Watson’s Experience of the Role
Toby Watson has described his involvement at Excalibur in terms of giving something back — applying experience developed over a long career in finance to something with a clear social purpose. For someone whose professional life had been shaped by the demands of international finance, including his years at Goldman Sachs, voluntary board work in education represented a meaningfully different kind of contribution.
As Chairman, Toby Watson led the board — chairing meetings, maintaining a close working relationship with the CEO, and overseeing the board’s own effectiveness. His role was non-executive throughout: providing oversight and support rather than operational direction. The discipline that Toby Watson developed at Goldman Sachs, working within large institutions where clear lines of responsibility mattered, shaped an approach to the role that was supportive rather than directive.
Toby Watson maintained his chairmanship at Excalibur alongside active professional commitments, including his work at Rampart Capital. That sustained engagement over nearly eight years reflects a genuine prioritisation of the voluntary role rather than a token commitment — something that is less common than it might appear among trustees with demanding professional lives.
What Voluntary Trusteeship Contributes to Education
A disengaged trustee board creates real risks for the schools it oversees. Financial decisions go insufficiently scrutinised, leadership transitions are handled poorly, and the organisation loses the external perspective that a well-functioning board provides. Genuinely engaged trustees — those who prepare carefully, ask informed questions, and show up consistently over time — provide something that no other governance arrangement can easily replicate.
Trustees who remain in post over many years accumulate institutional knowledge that is genuinely difficult to replace. They understand the trust’s history, its culture, and the context behind current challenges. The following tend to develop only with time:
- A working relationship with the executive team built on years of interaction rather than months
- An understanding of how the organisation has responded to past difficulties
- The credibility that comes from demonstrated, sustained engagement
- The ability to provide context and continuity during periods of leadership change or organisational development
Trusteeship offers experienced professionals the opportunity to apply their skills in a context with a clear public benefit — something that purely commercial roles rarely provide. For Toby Watson, the Excalibur chairmanship represented a sustained engagement with a purpose very different from his professional career. That kind of contribution tends to be personally meaningful in ways that are difficult to replicate through professional work alone.
A well-managed succession is one of the tests of a healthy governance culture. When Toby Watson stepped down in early 2026, Susan Clarke — a founding member of Excalibur and former Vice Chair — took over as Chair, bringing considerable experience of the organisation and of public sector leadership. The smoothness of that transition reflected the groundwork laid during Toby Watson’s tenure, and the care taken to ensure continuity rather than disruption.
