Pathway Trust Is a charitable company limited by guarantee and is registered with Companies House. Pathway Trust has charitable status and is classified as an exempt charity. Therefore, Pathway Trust is required to comply with three different sets of legislative requirements - company law, charity law, and education law.

There are three layers of governance in Pathway Trust:  Members, Trustees and Community Councillors, with each tier having a distinctive role.

Trustees

The Board of Trustees is the ‘accountable body’ for Pathway Trust. The Trustees are both the ‘directors’ for the purposes of the Companies Act and the ‘trustees’ for the purpose of the Charities Act.  They are responsible for ensuring compliance with legal requirements as well as the terms of our Funding Agreement. 

Pathway Trustees have four core functions:

• Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction
• Holding leaders to account for the educational standards Pupil outcomes, and the quality of provision across all schools
• Overseeing and ensuring effective financial governance, sustainability and value for money
• Upholding the Christian distinctiveness of the church schools within the trust

The Trust can have up to twelve Trustees. The Board usually meets six times each year and has two Board development sessions.  In 2026-27 the Board will meet on the following dates: 

• 22 October 2026
• 17 December 2026
• 11 February 2027
• 25 March 2027
• 27 May 2027
• 22 July 2027

The Board

The Board has the following six Committees to which it delegates some authority as detailed in the Scheme of Delegation:

• Education 
• Finance & Operations
• People 
• Risk & Audit
• Remuneration
• Ethos

Additional Information

The effectiveness of governance arrangements at Pathway are subject to periodic review. The last External Review of Governance (ERG) was held in June 2026 to support the merger of Castle School Education Trust (CSET) and The Priory Learning Trust (TPLT) in September 2026.

Historic governance and financial information relating to CSET and TPLT are filed at Companies House:

• THE PRIORY LEARNING TRUST Companies House
• PATHWAY TRUST (formerly CSET) Companies House

Queries regarding governance at Pathway Trust (including governance at CSET & TPLT prior to merger) should be directed to the Head of Governance at governance@pathwaytrust.uk. 

For further details, please also see our Governance Documents and Financial Information pages.