EVENTS
National #TrustLeaders Symposium 2026
Pure Accountability: people and communities at the heart of improvement and innovation. A post-white paper reality
with Jon Alexander, strategist and co-founder of the New Citizen Project, and a range of other leading thinkers and practitioners
The National #TrustLeaders Symposium is the annual ‘think tank’ event for CEOs, Education Leaders and Operational Leaders of academy trusts and other educational organisations. Previous symposia have welcomed leading societal and educational thinkers, including Sir Michael Barber, James Plunkett, and Dr Steve Munby. It’s the event where we connect, imagine, and innovate – together.
What the 2026 event focused on?
Accountability is evolving. Our focus as a sector and in society as a whole, is turning more and more towards ‘community informed’ intelligence and involvement as a force for improvement and innovation. We call the outcome of this shift: pure accountability. It’s accountability that is not limited to central oversight and national common measures of success – important though these can be. It’s accountability that is local, real-time, inclusive, and formative in nature. Exceptional leaders are enabling and encouraging pure accountability and harnessing its potential, a shift that is increasingly also reflected across wider sectors and society. And the new white paper puts shared endeavour and community impact at the heart of the 2026 onwards new era for academy trusts. Pure accountability is going mainstream!
In the current context, we increasingly need to harness the potential of people and communities at the heart of decision making, for informing and contributing to improvement and innovation, and keeping our organisations relevant and impactful in a changing world. We considered how trusts can and are adapting to this new reality, through forward thinking executive and board level leadership.
Accountability is no longer dominated by the summative – it is also formative. What does this mean? What does it look like in practice? How can pure accountability be enabled, harnessed and encouraged as one of the most powerful forces for improvement?
Resources
Michael Pain's Keynote Speech
You can download a copy of Michael’s speech ahd the #TrustLeaders Symposium 2026 by clicking the button below
The role of pure accountability in ‘Being an Employer of Choice’
Read Jonny Uttley’s long read on ‘The role of pure accountability in becoming an employer of choice’
Additional resources will be available over the summer
Appearing at the symposium
Jon Alexander
Jon is a strategist, storyteller and connector whose work is devoted to opening the way to a “Citizen Future”: one rooted in the deep truth that all of us are smarter than any of us. Jon began his career with a decade in the advertising industry, winning the prestigious Big Creative Idea of the Year, before making a dramatic change. Driven by a deep need to understand the impact on society of 3,000 commercial messages a day, he gathered three Masters degrees, exploring “Consumer-ism” and its alternatives from every angle. His writings have been included by McKinsey as one of its Top 5 Recommended Reads in its Summer Reading Guide 2022 and selected by the World Economic Forum for its CEO Book Club. Jon is also a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and the University of Manchester, and sits on the advisory councils of DemocracyNext, the Democracy and Culture Foundation, and the Better Politics Foundation.
Jon will share his pioneering thinking around the critical shift from consumer to citizen, why it is so critical to the future of our society and the next generation, and how leaders across a range of fields and disciplines are making it a reality.
Dr Sam Parrett CBE
CEO, London South East Academies
Dr Sam Parrett CBE is Group Principal and CEO of Elevare Civic Education Group, which comprises large group of colleges, a growing multi-academy trust spanning primary, secondary, Alternative Provision, and Special schools across South London, Kent, Sussex and Surrey, as well as a charity serving learners across London and the South East. With over 30 years’ experience in the sector, Sam is dedicated to education being a catalyst for social change, supporting both individuals and communities by spearheading the Group-wide mission to transform lives through the power of learning. Under her leadership, the Group received the Queen’s Anniversary Prize (2020), the National Public Leadership Award (2021), TES FE Provider of the Year (2021) and TES Trust of the Year (2024) awards.
Sam is a Board Member of Canterbury Christ Church University, where she completed her Doctorate in Education.
Sam’s work exemplifies civic leadership and the power of education to build resilient, thriving communities. She is particularly passionate about supporting SEND and disadvantaged learners. She will share with colleagues how the trust is developing and embarking upon its own form of pure accountability with its stakeholders and communities – called ‘inclusive accountability’
Kate Davies
Chief Executive, White Woods Primary Academy Trust
Kate Davies is Chief Executive of White Woods Primary Academy Trust, a multi-academy trust serving communities across South Yorkshire and Derbyshire. She has extensive experience in school improvement, leadership development and system leadership, particularly in schools serving disadvantaged communities.
Alongside her role as CEO, Kate is completing a doctoral study exploring the experiences of CEOs leading multi-academy trusts. Her research examines how trust leaders navigate policy pressures, accountability demands and organisational complexity while shaping the culture of their organisations.
Most importantly she is a proud mum of 3 boys (men) and a Liverpool fan!
Kate’s doctoral research explores how CEOs of multi-academy trusts experience leadership within an increasingly complex and high-stakes policy environment. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, the study examines how trust leaders respond to external accountability pressures while attempting to build coherent organisational cultures across groups of schools.
One emerging theme from the research is the challenge of maintaining meaningful connections between trust governance structures and the communities schools serve. As trusts grow, information about local contexts and community needs can become diluted as it moves through organisational layers. The research raises important questions about how multi-academy trusts can strengthen mechanisms for community voice, participation and transparency while operating within a system shaped by strong accountability pressures.
Rob Peters
Director of Marketing and Communications National Governance Association
Rob is a marketing strategist blending expertise in IT and e-business. He leads NGA’s marketing and communications directorate, overseeing marketing, web, communications, governance development, and customer service operations.
Beyond his marketing role, Rob has taken on governance leadership roles, including chairing a single academy trust and a local governing board. He is currently serving as a trustee to a MAT.
Jonny Uttley
Forum Strategy Associate, author and former CEO
Jonny is Forum Strategy’s Lead Associate for ‘Being an employer of choice’, author, and former CEO. Jonny is the co-author of ‘Putting Staff First’; and the former CEO of TEAL Multi Academy Trust, having previously been a Headteacher and Executive Principal. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Young Lives and a Trustee for SHINE. Jonny has been a member of the IPPR’s Inclusion Working Party and the DfE’s National MAT CEO Advisory Group. His thinkpiece: ‘Being an employer of choice, the role of pure accountability’ is published with Forum Strategy this Summer. Jonny now leads our employer of choice consultancy and advisory work, and is an expert contributor to the Being The CEO programme.
Sam Strickland
CEO, The Luminara Education Trust
Sam Strickland is the Principal/CEO of The Duston School and The Luminara Education Trust. He has helped to guide Duston’s GCSE results from the bottom 20% nationally to the top 20% and A Level outcomes to the top 5% nationally. Sam began his teaching career as a History teacher in Bedfordshire having completed his PGCE at the University of Cambridge. His career quickly accelerated and he became Head of History and Classics. Sam has served as a Vice Principal, where he directly oversaw student care, the Sixth Form, the curriculum, SEND, behaviour and served as the safeguarding lead for an entire trust. He is organiser of ResearchED Northampton and author of Education Exposed, Education Exposed 2, The Behaviour Manual, They Don’t Behave For Me, Creating Positive Classrooms and Is Leadership A Race?, and is a leading voice in the current conversation in education. He has had educational resources and research published and he regularly delivers courses and keynotes nationally. His school has served as a national behaviour hub lead school and he has served as a lead facilitator for a variety of NPQs.
Sir Steve Lancashire
Chair of National #TrustLeaders CEO Network
Steve is Chair of our national #TrustLeaders CEO network & a Forum Strategy Associate offering mentoring to academy trust CEOs and working alongside Michael Pain on our Being the CEO programme. Sir Steve has delivered his highly anticipated annual keynote speech at this event since 2022. Previously, Sir Steve was the founder CEO of REAch2, one of the largest primary academy trusts in England and has been involved in primary education for over thirty years as an Executive Headteacher before becoming the CEO of REAch2. He is the author of the acclaimed book ‘Reflections on Being The CEO’.
He is a highly respected thought leader, mentor and educational thinker – nationally and internationally.
Michael Pain
Founder, Forum Strategy
Michael Pain is the founder of Forum Strategy and an entrepreneur, overseeing the development of successful businesses and a national network of well over one hundred Chief Executives. He is a long-standing strategic adviser to CEOs and Chairs, a ‘sought after’ coach to executives, and author of the acclaimed book: ‘Being The CEO‘. In 2021, Michael’s Being The CEO framework was endorsed and published as the template job description for academy trust CEOs by the National Governance Association. Michael is a barrister by training, having been Called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 2007. He is also a co-owner of Satis Education, a sector-leading executive recruitment organisation
Michael developed the concept of ‘pure accountability’ in 2020, and has written on it extensively in sector publications, as well as supporting a number of trusts and other organisations to take it forward in practice.
National #TrustLeaders Symposium 2025
One year in: navigating the change as trusts and as a sector
Read all the details from the 2025 #TrustLeaders Symposium by clicking the button below.