Page 4 - Scheme of Delegation Dec19

1.0 INTRODUCTION
The Diocese of Chichester Academy Trust is a Company Limited by Guarantee (Registration Number 09201845) registered at Companies House. As a company, it is legally responsible for the governance of all academies within the Trust in line with its Articles of Association. The Trust also takes account of any guidance as to the governance of academies that the Secretary of State may publish to the extent permitted by the Trust’s governing documents.
The Trust is governed by a Board of Trustees who are responsible for all the management and administration of the Trust and all the academies in the Trust. The Members of the Trust (the Members) appoint the Trustees and hold the Board of Trustees to account for the performance of the Trust. The Trust has a Master Funding Agreement and Supplemental Funding Agreements with the Secretary of State. The Board of Trustees is, therefore, accountable to external government agencies, including the Charity Commission and the Department for Education, for the quality of the education it provides; the Board of Trustees is also required to have robust systems in place through which it can assure itself of quality, safety and good practice. For any academy in the Trust designated as a Church of England school, the Board of Trustees is accountable to the Chichester Diocesan Board of Education and the Bishop of Chichester to ensure that the academy is conducted as a Church of England school.
To enable the Board of Trustees to carry out its responsibilities, it appoints people in each academy who are more locally based to serve on a Local Governing Body which has been established to ensure the good governance of the academy. The Local Governing Body is legally ‘an advisory body’ for the academy, as set out in the Master Funding Agreement entered into by the Trust with the Secretary of State. The roles and responsibilities of the Board of Trustees in relation to those of the Local Governing Body, together with the commitments to each other to ensure the success of the academy, are outlined in the Scheme of Delegation.
All academies in the Trust are expected to follow this scheme of delegation, based on the principle of ‘earned autonomy’. Where the Board of Trustees is concerned about the effectiveness of the leadership and management of an academy, the financial position of an academy or there are concerns how the school is operating as an academy they may decide to change the levels of delegation. If there are serious concerns about the performance of an academy, the Board of Trustees may decide to vary the membership of the local governing body or replace the local governing body with a Core Executive Group with full responsibility for the running of the academy.
Scheme of Delegation Review – DCAT October 2019
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