Governance

The Cavendish School is a part of the Eastern Learning Alliance

ELA has ultimate responsibility for all academies and schools within the Trust. Our Members, Trustees and Governors are voluntary positions taken on by highly experienced individuals with a broad range of skills and backgrounds. When a school joins the Trust it becomes part of a three tier governance structure.

Members

The members demonstrate a commitment to the long-term interests of children and schools whilst also understanding the corporate governance context of the Trust. Members cannot serve as local governors.

The link for individual schools will be through the Heads of Academies, the Local Governing Body (LGB) and the Trustees. The LGBs will report to the Trustees who in turn will report to the Members. The Scheme of Delegation sets out the detailed delegation of responsibility.

The key functions of the members are to

  • meet once a year or as need arises
  • appoint Trustees based on competence/skills/needs analysis
  • monitor and assess progress of the Trust
  • hold Trustees to account and to ensure the Trust continues to meet its Articles of Association

ELA has 5 Members. Details about our Trustees and Members along with their duties can be found here.

Local Governing Body

Within the Trust, each school continues to have its own local governing body (LGB), whose main focus is to support and challenge the Head of Academy to improve and build an even stronger offer. The role of ‘critical friend’ is vitally important; therefore each LGB plays a crucial part in developing both the individual school and ELA more broadly.

The Trust has produced a Scheme of Delegation that will be used for all academies in the Trust. The Scheme of Delegation enables each Academy to operate distinctly within the policies, procedures and practices set out by the Trust. This is not intended to be preclusive, but to allow the school to focus solely on educating students with the resource matters dealt with centrally.

School Governors

NameAppointmentStart of termEnd of termRole
Sansome, AlisonCommunity14/07/202113/07/2025
Peyton Jones, DorothyParent26/01/202325/01/2027
Kimberley-Duffell, JennaParent26/01/202325/01/2027
Cooper, LeahCommunity23/03/202322/03/2027Safeguarding Link Governor
Paine, Natalie (Chair)Community24/05/202317/06/2027Chair
Allcock, PeterCommunity23/03/202322/03/2027
Smith, Stephanie (Head)Ex-OfficioEx-officioEx-officioHead of School

To contact the Local Governing Body please contact the Clerk to the Governors, Louise Todd.

Our Annual audited accounts. Memorandum of association, articles of association, funding agreements and Executive pay can all be found here.

Information regarding the schools financial benchmarking data can be found here.