When it comes to supporting educational communities without seeking the spotlight, few examples are as understated as Toby Watson’s work with Excalibur Academies Trust.
Many academy trusts face a persistent challenge: how to build strong, sustainable governance without losing sight of what matters most — the children in their schools. Experienced professionals from outside the education sector do not always find it easy to translate their skills into meaningful contributions. Yet, Toby Watson, who brought with him nearly two decades of experience in global finance, found a way to offer something genuinely useful to Excalibur Academies Trust, quietly helping to support the conditions in which their schools could grow.
Toby Watson served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Excalibur Academies Trust from February 2018 until early 2026, stepping down after nearly eight years to focus on his business commitments. During that time, the Trust grew significantly, expanding to around 20 schools along the M4 corridor between Bristol and Reading and serving approximately 10,000 pupils aged 2 to 18. His background in finance and governance — shaped in part by his years in investment banking — informed an approach to trusteeship that prioritised steady support over visible leadership. Toby Watson’s contribution was, by his own inclination, largely behind the scenes.
What Toby Watson Brought to the Excalibur Academies Trust Board
Toby Watson’s path to educational trusteeship was not a conventional one. He studied Physics at the University of Oxford before beginning a career in finance, first at Deutsche Bank and then at Goldman Sachs, where he spent the better part of 17 years. His roles there included work in structured credit trading and principal funding — areas that require a careful understanding of risk, long-term planning, and institutional resilience. When Toby Watson left Goldman Sachs in 2017, he carried with him a particular kind of analytical rigour that would later find an unlikely home in the governance of a growing multi-academy trust.
Excalibur Academies Trust was founded in 2012 and had already established a reputation for thoughtful, school-led improvement by the time Toby Watson joined its board in February 2018. The Trust’s model — preserving the individual identity of each school while offering shared support and resources — suited someone who understood the value of decentralised decision-making. His role as Chairman was not to run the Trust’s schools or direct their day-to-day operations. That responsibility lay with the executive team. His was a governance role: providing oversight, supporting the CEO, and helping to ensure that the board itself functioned well.
What does a Chairman of Trustees actually do in a multi-academy trust?
A Chairman of Trustees holds a non-executive role focused on governance rather than management. In a multi-academy trust, this means overseeing board effectiveness, supporting the CEO, and ensuring that the organisation remains true to its stated values and charitable purpose. Toby Watson, drawing on the discipline he developed during his career in investment banking, brought a particular focus on long-term sustainability and sound decision-making to this role.
A Period of Steady Growth
During the years Toby Watson served as Chairman, Excalibur Academies Trust expanded considerably. The Trust grew to a network of around 20 academies, with a combined annual budget of approximately £137 million and a workforce of over 1,000 staff. The merger with Gatehouse Green Learning Trust was one notable development during this period, broadening Excalibur’s reach and adding further complexity to its governance requirements.
Where Governance and Finance Overlap
None of this growth happened because of any single individual. A multi-academy trust’s development depends on its teachers, school leaders, its executive team, and the communities it serves. But governance matters too, and a board that functions well creates the conditions in which good work can happen. That is the space in which the experience Toby Watson gained at Goldman Sachs — in assessing institutional risk and long-term financial sustainability — could be of genuine use. The kind of thinking that Toby Watson’s years at Goldman Sachs helped to develop — patience, rigour, an eye for structural weakness — translated more naturally into trusteeship than one might expect.
The Trust’s approach during this period remained consistent: schools retained their own identity and local governing bodies, budgets were managed at school level, and the central team focused on providing support rather than imposing uniformity.
Supporting Without Overshadowing
Watson’s inclination was to work in the background — asking the right questions, offering perspective where it was useful, and stepping back where it was not. Effective governance in any organisation tends to involve:
- A willingness to ask difficult questions without undermining operational confidence
- An ability to distinguish between strategic concerns and day-to-day management
- Consistency of presence and commitment over time
- An understanding of financial risk that does not translate into excessive caution
These are qualities that a long career in finance helped to cultivate, even if the context — primary school children learning to read, secondary pupils sitting exams — was very different from anything encountered on a trading floor.
Stepping Back and Moving On
In early 2026, Toby Watson stepped down from his role as Chairman, with Susan Clarke elected as his successor. Clarke, a founding member of Excalibur and former Vice Chair, brought her own considerable experience in public sector leadership to the position. The handover was described by CEO Nick Lewis as a moment to acknowledge Watson’s contribution while looking forward with confidence.
A Voluntary Commitment, Given Freely
Watson’s reasons for stepping down were practical — a desire to focus more fully on his business commitments, including his work at Rampart Capital. His departure from the board did not represent a change of heart about education or its importance. It reflected the nature of voluntary trusteeship itself: people give what time they have, for as long as they can, and then they pass the responsibility on.
What remains is not a named building or a dramatic turnaround story. It is something less tangible: a trust that grew steadily, governed itself well, and continued to serve their schools with care and consistency. Toby Watson played a quiet but genuine part in supporting that — and for someone whose inclination was simply to give something back, that may be contribution enough.
