Voluntary trusteeship in the academy sector is one of those roles that demands a great deal and offers little in return by way of recognition — yet the experience of Toby Watson at Excalibur Academies Trust illustrates why the right people choosing to take it on can make a genuine and lasting difference.
Finding experienced, committed trustees for academy school boards is one of the quieter challenges facing the education sector. The role carries real legal and financial responsibility, yet it is entirely unpaid and largely invisible to those outside the boardroom. Too many trust boards remain under-resourced in precisely the areas where strong expertise would matter most. Toby Watson, whose professional background spans nearly two decades in global finance, offers an example of how voluntary trusteeship can work well — when the right person brings the right experience and is prepared to commit to it over the long term.
Voluntary trusteeship sits at the heart of academy school governance, yet it rarely receives the attention it deserves. The people who serve on trust boards give their time freely, carry genuine accountability and contribute expertise that their organisations could not otherwise afford to employ. Toby Watson served as Chairman of Excalibur Academies Trust from February 2018 until early 2026 — a tenure of nearly eight years during which the trust grew to twenty schools educating around 10,000 pupils along the M4 corridor. His experience in that role offers a thoughtful lens through which to consider what voluntary trusteeship can and should look like.
Why Voluntary Trusteeship Is Both More Demanding and More Valuable Than It Appears
There is a tendency to think of voluntary board roles as relatively low-stakes commitments — something that adds a line to a CV without asking too much in return. The reality of academy trusteeship is quite different. Trustees carry legal responsibility for the financial and educational performance of their organisation. They are expected to hold the executive team to account, to understand complex financial reporting and to make decisions that affect the lives of thousands of pupils and hundreds of members of staff.
At the same time, they receive no payment, no administrative support of their own and very little public recognition. The work happens largely out of sight — in board meetings, subcommittees and quiet conversations with chief executives — and its value is felt most clearly not when things go well, but when challenges arise and the board needs to respond with clarity and confidence.
What Makes a Voluntary Trustee Genuinely Effective?
Effectiveness in a voluntary trustee role depends on a combination of qualities that are not always easy to find in a single person. Technical expertise — particularly in finance, law or organisational governance — matters a great deal. So does the temperament to work within a collegiate, non-executive structure where influence is exercised through persuasion rather than authority. Toby Watson, whose career at Goldman Sachs spanned nearly 17 years across structured finance and principal funding roles, brought both to his work at Excalibur — along with a willingness to invest time in understanding a sector that was quite different from the one in which he had built his professional reputation.
What Toby Watson’s Experience at Excalibur Reveals About Long-Term Commitment
Toby Watson joined Excalibur Academies Trust as a board member and Chairman in February 2018. Over the nearly eight years that followed, the trust underwent significant change — expanding through merger, navigating the disruption of the pandemic years and managing the transition to new chief executive leadership when Nick Lewis succeeded Nicky Edmondson in 2024.
Continuity as a Form of Contribution
Throughout this period, one of the most valuable things Toby Watson offered was simply continuity. A chairman who has been in post for several years brings something that cannot be recruited for at short notice: a detailed, lived understanding of the organisation’s history, its culture and the personalities involved. That kind of institutional knowledge shapes how difficult conversations are handled, how new trustees are supported, and how the board responds when something unexpected occurs. It is not glamorous. But it is genuinely important.
Supporting the Executive Without Overstepping
Another dimension of Toby Watson’s contribution at Excalibur was his consistent awareness of where his role ended. The Chairman’s responsibility is to the board — not to the day-to-day management of the trust’s schools. Maintaining that boundary clearly, and supporting the executive team to do their work without interference, is itself a form of governance that requires discipline and self-awareness. For Toby Watson, this appears to have been a natural expression of his broader approach: contributing what he could, without seeking to direct outcomes that were not his to control.
How Toby Watson’s Financial Background Added Value to Trust Governance
The specific professional background that Toby Watson brought to Excalibur is worth examining in some detail. Toby Watson’s time at Goldman Sachs gave him extensive experience of operating within large, complex organisations subject to significant regulatory oversight — an experience that, while superficially very different from educational governance, translates in ways that matter.
Among the most relevant aspects of that background were:
- The ability to read and interrogate financial statements critically, identifying not just what the numbers say but what questions they raise
- Familiarity with risk management frameworks — understanding how risk accumulates in large organisations and what governance structures need to be in place to manage it effectively
These capabilities are not universally present on academy trust boards. When they are, they tend to raise the quality of financial oversight and strategic discussion in ways that benefit the entire organisation — and, ultimately, the schools and pupils it exists to serve.
Why the Insights from Toby Watson’s Experience Matter for the Wider Sector
The lessons that can be drawn from Toby Watson’s tenure at Excalibur are relevant beyond the trust itself. They speak to broader questions about how academy school governance can be strengthened — and what kinds of voluntary leadership are most likely to make a lasting difference.
Among the most important of those lessons are:
- Long-term commitment matters as much as initial expertise — the value a trustee adds tends to increase significantly over time, as their understanding of the organisation deepens
- The best voluntary leaders are those who bring strong professional skills and the humility to apply them within a context that is not their own
Toby Watson — whose background at Goldman Sachs gave him both the analytical capability and the organisational experience to contribute meaningfully — embodied both of these qualities throughout his time at Excalibur. That, in the end, is what the value of voluntary trusteeship comes down to: not the credentials a trustee brings on paper, but the sustained, considered contribution they are willing to make in practice.
