Opinion: Leadership

CEOs must help communities realise their full potential

The breadth of expectations placed on trusts and schools is becoming unsustainable and can only be met by reawakening community power

The breadth of expectations placed on trusts and schools is becoming unsustainable and can only be met by reawakening community power

11 Sep 2025, 8:54

As public sector funding and bandwidth become ever tighter, reawakening the capacity and responsibility of communities is now the leadership priority of a generation.

We are currently witnessing ever-widening expectations placed on trusts and schools. Partly driven by the age of austerity’s scaling back of wider provision, but also by a (less-spoken of) diminishing sense of community ownership and responsibility, this growth is rapidly becoming unsustainable, financially and organisationally.

Technological change, economic pressures and a growing ‘citizen-as-customer’ mindset have contributed to greater isolationism and a more transactional relationship with institutions.

Meanwhile, many of the headwinds education faces (including a growing lack of readiness for school, concerning levels of childhood obesity, some educational needs and the disengagement of so many parents) also fundamentally come down to this eroding sense of shared community endeavour. We must reawaken this urgently.

In a well-functioning society, community is an essential foundation. We need thriving communities as the social glue and cornerstones of a culture that prizes and sustains learning, health, connection, social capital and reciprocity beyond the school gates.

At a national level, we need a vision that clearly defines the roles and responsibilities of trusts and schools, and reiterates the vital importance of community and families in ensuring the next generation thrive.

This would limit the temptation of policies and frameworks to place even more onus on schools solving every other challenge. It would also recognise that humanity flourishes through thriving communities.

However, this also goes beyond national policy. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then community power eats national strategies for lunch and dinner. Following an era defined by (at times, much-needed) central solutions such as Ofsted and national strategies, we have lost sight of how enabling and unleashing community participation and responsibility runs even deeper.

In 2019, I published Forum Strategy’s new narrative for a new decade, a vision for academy trusts at the heart of their communities. I wrote of the role of CEO as community leader

Many trusts have since made great strides in co-ordinating impactful relationships with businesses, charities and one another to enhance provision. However, the role and responsibility of communities and families themselves (as partners rather than simply ‘end users’) now needs reaffirming and underpinning by greater participation and expectations.

This shift is hard to achieve, but necessary. So how can trusts and CEOs begin to ‘nudge’ things in this direction?

Speak to your community

Trusts’ vision and narrative should be shaped with and speak directly to communities. It shouldn’t be written for Ofsted or for other educational professionals; it should awaken and mobilise a genuine sense of community identity, potential and aspiration. 

Embrace volunteerism

Give local governing bodies a genuine and focused role in being the champions of communities and community involvement. Beyond governance, trusts should aspire to the level of volunteerism seen in the police and NHS, ensuring they have a strategy to identify and harness the talents, expertise, knowledge and capacity around them.  

Redefine local accountability

In 2020, I coined the phrase pure accountability. This means, alongside national accountabilities, giving the community (including parents and pupils) a genuine voice in the direction of the trust and ensuring local accountability works both ways, through commitments to shared solutions and definitions of success.

Review your board’s make-up

How immersed in the community is your board? Does it include well-recognised community leaders, including those who provide employment and key services or co-ordinate wider aspects of community life?

Champion your community

To build our future, we must look to our past. The old adage stands true: it takes a village to raise a child.

We are rapidly learning that the state is not an effective or sustainable proxy for the village, and CEOs must encourage, help, enable and expect every village to play its full part. They must be champions of collective endeavour, celebrants of local success and achievements, and advocates for their community’s needs.

True community-enabling leadership can help secure the foundation upon which every child thrives and achieves in the decade ahead.

Forum Strategy’s eighth annual National #TrustLeaders CEO Conference takes place on 18th September in Nottingham.

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