The CST CEO Summit is a 24-hour residential event for trust leaders, offering a focused space for reflection, connection and challenge at the end of the summer term.
This year’s theme, Unlocking the Partnership Dividend: How to build your place-based leadership, explores how trust leaders can work with others to enable children and communities to flourish, particularly in areas of disadvantage.
Through a practical theory of change, the summit will examine how leaders can act as integrators, combining relationships, data, story and deep listening to navigate the barriers to effective civic and system leadership.
With places limited to 150 delegates, the Summit offers an intimate environment to strengthen networks, renew your sense of purpose and gain practical strategies for lasting change.
The Summit is for members of CST professional community for CEOs. You are also welcome to bring another leader from your trust to support their professional development and the embedding of this practice in your organisation
Hear from some of today's leading educational thinkers
Give you and your leadership team time to re-think how your trust works
Connect with colleagues from school trusts across the country
Engage with innovative providers to the school trust sector
This summit is an extension of the CST Chief executives professional community - a unique space for school trust leaders to network, share, and learn, all year round. Community membership is an integral part of CST membership.
Founder, The Relationships Project
Founder, The Relationships Project
David is a community worker, co-founder and now co-lead, of the Relationships Project. Good relationships are the foundations of everything that matters. The Project gathers evidence, makes tools, delivers training, runs support networks and is currently developing the Relational Practice Academy - a new centre for applied learning in relationship centred practice.
Amongst other innovations David also co-founded and led Community Links from the kitchen table to the Community Enterprise of the Year award, Discover – the UK's first story centre for children and their families, and Shift – applying behavioural insight and award winning design to social change. He helped to create the Social Impact Bond, chaired the first SIB funded project and established and led the Prime Minister’s Council on Social Action from 2007 to 2010. He was the first Practitioner in Residence at the LSE Marshall Institute, is an Ashoka Senior Fellow and is currently chair of the Flying Seagulls. He was once described by the Guardian as “the godfather of the community sector, equally admired on the left and right”.
Minister for School Standards, Department for Education
Minister for School Standards, Department for Education
Georgia Gould was appointed Minister of State (Minister for School Standards) at the Department for Education on 6 September 2025. She was previously Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office between 9 July 2024 and 6 September 2025. Georgia was elected as the MP for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale in July 2024.
Director, Empowering Leadership
Director, Empowering Leadership
Maggie has worked for many years in senior leadership positions in schools and local authorities. She was the director for leadership development, research and succession planning at the NCSL in England and interim chief executive until 2013.
She now works internationally with leaders and their teams in education and other sectors fostering practices that reduce stress, anxiety and overwhelm and increase effectiveness and resilience through the practice of presence & compassionate leadership. She is the author of Leading with Presence; it's an inside job, published in 2022 by Cadogan Press.
She is a Trustee of L.E.A.D. Academy Trust, of Bedfordshire Schools Trust, The Chair of the School of Contemplative Life, and has just finished a nine year term as a trustee of The Story Museum, Oxford; a museum dedicated to the power of story to change lives.
She was awarded the CBE for services to Education in 2014.
For details about commercial tickets, please contact conference@cstuk.org.uk.
CST members only: Full conference access on both days, including dinner on day one
Book your place£630 inc VAT at 20%
Our summit takes place at The Grand Hotel, Birmingham.
We recommend using public transport wherever possible to attend. The venue is within Birmingham’s Clean Air Zone and there may be additional fees for driving to the venue.
1 Church Street
Birmingham
B3 2FE
The summit takes place on 13 & 14 July 2026.
Registration starts at 11:30 on 13 July, followed by lunch with the main programme running from 13:00 to 17:30. There will be a drinks reception from 19:00, followed by dinner from 19:30 to 21:30.
Day two will run from 09:00 to 13:30. Lunch will be provided, whether you prefer to stay and network, or grab and go.
Delegate places include full access to both days of the summit, refreshments on arrival, drinks reception, dinner and accommodation on day one.
Places also include breakfast, refreshments and lunch on day two, whether you prefer to stay and network, or grab and go.
Delegates are responsible for their own travel to and from the venue.
The event programme is provisional and subject to change. Booking terms and conditions apply.
Imagery is from past events and may not reflect future programmes.
Confederation of School Trusts · Registered in England & Wales, company no: 05303883 · Charity no: 1107640.
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