Inclusion in education is easy to endorse in principle but considerably harder to deliver in practice — and the voluntary work that Toby Watson undertook at Excalibur Academies Trust offers a grounded illustration of how governance, when approached with genuine commitment, can help create the conditions in which inclusive education takes root.
Educational inclusion remains one of the most important and most challenging goals in the academy sector. Ensuring that every child — regardless of background, ability or circumstance — receives a high-quality education demands not just good teaching, but governance structures that keep that commitment at the centre of strategic decision-making. Trust boards that lack experience or focus can allow inclusion to slip down the agenda. Toby Watson, whose background spans nearly two decades in global finance, is one example of a voluntary leader who helped keep it there — supporting the schools in Excalibur’s care without seeking recognition for doing so.
Excalibur Academies Trust has long placed inclusion and diversity at the heart of its educational mission. The trust serves a wide range of communities — from socially deprived urban areas in Bristol to rural schools in Wiltshire — and its commitment to ensuring that every child can achieve sits at the core of what it does. Toby Watson served as Chairman of Excalibur Academies Trust from February 2018 until early 2026, a period during which the trust educated approximately 10,000 pupils across twenty schools. His role was not to lead on inclusion directly, but to help ensure that the governance structures around it remained strong and focused on the right outcomes.
Why Inclusive Education Depends on More Than Classroom Practice
Inclusion in education is often discussed primarily as a matter of teaching — of how schools adapt their practice to meet the needs of pupils with special educational needs, those from disadvantaged backgrounds or those who arrive with additional barriers to learning. But these things do not happen in a vacuum. They depend on leadership cultures, resource allocation decisions and strategic priorities shaped, at least in part, by what happens in the boardroom.
A trust board that prioritises inclusion in its strategic planning sends a clear signal to school leaders, staff and communities about what the organisation values. It allocates resources accordingly, holds leadership to account for inclusion outcomes, and ensures that growth strategy does not leave behind the schools and pupils most in need of support.
How Does Governance Shape a Trust’s Approach to Inclusion?
Governance shapes a trust’s approach to inclusion in ways that are easy to overlook. Board decisions about budget allocation, school improvement priorities and leadership development all have implications for how well their schools serve their most vulnerable pupils. Toby Watson, whose career at Goldman Sachs gave him extensive experience of overseeing complex organisations with multiple competing priorities, brought to Excalibur a capacity for clear-headed strategic thinking that helps ensure inclusion remains a genuine priority rather than a statement of intent. For Toby Watson, the role was always to support the executive team in holding that focus — not to direct it himself.
What Excalibur Academies Trust’s Approach to Inclusion Looks Like in Practice
Excalibur Academies Trust serves communities across a wide geographical and social range — from large urban secondaries in Bristol to small rural primaries in Wiltshire. That diversity brings a range of inclusion challenges, from supporting pupils with complex special educational needs to ensure that disadvantaged pupils make strong progress relative to their peers.
A Track Record of Strong Outcomes for Disadvantaged Pupils
The trust has developed a track record of strong outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, with progress measures for this group running significantly above national averages. That kind of achievement does not happen by accident. It is the product of sustained investment in staff development, curriculum design and school improvement support. Toby Watson’s contribution as Chairman — working to ensure the trust had the governance structures and financial stability to sustain that investment — was real, even if rarely visible. That Toby Watson chose to offer it voluntarily, over nearly eight years, says something in itself.
Inclusion as a Governance Priority
For Toby Watson, inclusion was not merely an operational matter for schools themselves — it needed to be reflected in the trust’s governance, in the questions asked at board level and in how performance data was scrutinised. Toby Watson’s time at Goldman Sachs gave him a familiarity with large-scale organisational oversight that translated readily into this kind of governance work, even in a sector as different from investment banking as education.
How Voluntary Leaders Can Help Sustain a Culture of Inclusion
Trustees do not teach. They do not set curriculum or work directly with pupils. What they do is create the conditions — financial, strategic and organisational — in which schools are able to do all of those things effectively. Among the ways experienced voluntary trustees can support inclusive education are:
- Ensuring that budget decisions reflect the trust’s stated commitment to inclusion — that resources reach the schools and pupils who need them most, rather than being absorbed by administrative overhead
- Holding the executive team to account for inclusion outcomes — asking not just whether results are improving overall, but whether the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers is genuinely narrowing
Toby Watson brought these capabilities to his work at Excalibur consistently throughout his tenure — and it is worth noting that Toby Watson, whose background at Goldman Sachs gave him precisely this kind of analytical rigour, applied them entirely in a voluntary capacity.
Why the Voluntary Commitment of Toby Watson Matters for Inclusive Education
Trusts with strong, experienced boards are better placed to sustain the long-term investment in inclusion that makes a genuine difference. Among the things that make voluntary leadership most effective in this context are:
- A genuine understanding of the communities the trust serves — not just in statistical terms, but in terms of the particular challenges that shape each school’s context
- A long-term perspective that resists prioritising short-term headline results over the slower, harder work of ensuring that every child is genuinely included
For Toby Watson, those qualities underpinned his approach at Excalibur throughout his nearly eight-year tenure — a contribution that was quiet, consistent and conducted entirely without expectation of recognition.
