Last week we had confirmation that the Department for Education will no longer fund the National Institute of Teaching’s trust leader development programme beyond its current cohort.
This may appear a niche CPD decision. It is not.
It’s a signal - a sharp one - that if we want to secure the next generation of exceptional multi-academy trust leaders, trusts will need to take the lead ourselves.
The trust CEO pipeline
I was a member of the advisory group that developed the content framework for the CEO programme.
On the one hand, it was ambitious and long overdue, but on the other it simply set out the expectation that we should demand a level of investment in the learning and development of MAT leaders that comes closer to matching equivalent roles in other sectors.
Unlike most leadership training, through week-long immersions it offered a rare glimpse into the lived experience of trust CEOs - not just the theory or the frameworks, but the full reality: the scrutiny, the scale, the stakes.
Bespoke training
Some viewed it as expensive or elitist. But, in truth, it laid bare how little we invest in preparing people for one of the most complex roles in the education system.
The programme showed that high-quality, immersive development for future CEOs is not a luxury - it’s a necessity.
Now, with the DfE stepping away, we face a familiar pattern: national ambition without national infrastructure.
And in a system where executive leadership is more complex and more critical than ever, that is a gap we cannot afford to ignore.
Trust leadership
The need is urgent and obvious. We need more people who are not only willing but ready to lead trusts. Leaders who can steward tens of schools, thousands of young people and millions of pounds of public money. Leaders who can operate across the big picture and the fine detail. Leaders who are rigorous, relational and resilient - all at once.
In our trust, we’ve seen what becomes possible when you invest seriously in your senior talent. When we created the regional education director role in Lift three years ago, we explicitly positioned it as a CEO apprenticeship opportunity. This, in part, reflected the opportunity that I had to spend four years working alongside Ark Schools’ CEO, Lucy Heller.
In the past four years, six of our regional education directors and senior leaders have gone on to become CEOs of other trusts. Of course, their departure is a loss and means we have to be very intentional about building succession pipelines, but the benefit to the system outweighs this many times over.
That’s what system generosity looks like. And it matters.
Work shadowing
But generosity alone isn’t enough. We now need to formalise the pipeline. That’s why we will continue to support whatever programme follows from the National Institute of Teaching from autumn, and, alongside our existing executive leadership programmes, we are also launching our own rotating internal immersion weeks, in which our regional education directors will shadow me.
At the heart of the approach is a deceptively simple idea: you can’t become what you’ve never seen.
Mirroring the National Institute of Teaching model, every participant will get an “access all areas” pass for a full week. Not a polished highlights reel, but the real thing; sitting in on strategic board conversations, budget trade-offs, dealing with critical incidents, conversations with the DfE, media calls, policy dilemmas and all of the glorious bits in between!
It is about understanding what to delegate, what not to, and what it really feels like to carry the weight of the role. The highs, the lows and the responsibility that comes with both.
It is designed to give aspiring CEOs a front-row seat to experience the full complexity of the job, and will help them to decide whether it is right for them and whether they feel ready and equipped to meet the challenge of the job. It also opens up the “black box” of central team operations, which is rarely visible to people doing the important work on the front line in schools.
Demand for leadership roles
This matters because the system is evolving fast. More trusts are merging, growing, consolidating or reshaping. We need leadership that is equipped for that reality. And we need it now.
Of course, some will ask whether we risk developing leaders only to lose them. But that’s the point. We grow leaders not just for ourselves, but for the system. That’s how we build a resilient education sector -through intentional design, investment and a willingness to let leadership ripple outwards.
As Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts (CST), rightly noted in response to the DfE’s decision, the CEO role is fundamentally different from that of a headteacher. It demands unique preparation and distinct support. CST will continue to play an important role in developing that offer, but trusts now have a clear opportunity - and responsibility -to step forward and take the lead in this work.
If national infrastructure will not do it, then we must. Not out of obligation, but because it is the right thing to do. For our schools, for our leaders and for the wider sector more broadly.
Becks Boomer-Clark is CEO of Lift Schools
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