Alex Walmsley, Chair of Trustees for First Federation Trust, a multi-academy trust (MAT) of 29 primary schools across Devon and west Dorset, was among the chartered accountants awarded with an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for services to education in the 2024 King’s Birthday Honours list.

The former managing partner of Thompson Jenner, a Devon-based accountancy practice, had been volunteering for several years before he retired in 2011. He wanted to dedicate some of his retirement in a more formal approach to education and was considering his options when the First Federation Trust approached ICAEW looking for a chartered accountant in 2014 because it needed help with its financial management

As a registered volunteer at ICAEW, Walmsley spotted this opportunity online and, as it was close to home, applied to join the Trust as chair of its financial committee. He’d recently had some experience of volunteering in education after a former client had asked him to join a school governing body in Exeter; it was financially challenged and needed that external financial expertise. He found this work satisfying and thought he’d like to do something on a volunteer basis in education. 

A year later, as the education sector was undergoing major challenges, the Trust asked Walmsley to chair the Board of Trustees, which he willingly accepted. Under his tenure, the Trust has grown from six schools to 29 mainly rural primary schools today, specialising in helping them improve education, operations and financial management by working together in a multi-academy trust.

“Changes in the education sector meant that more strategic thinking was needed. The education sector is financially challenged, and the Department of Education is not really helpful in that we are asked to provide three-year budgets, but departmental decision-making and funding commitments can be much more short term – for example, we are not told what our income is beyond the next year.” 

Traditionally, schools have found budgeting extremely challenging, and financial management in the sector wasn’t historically as well developed as it is in the private sector. The kind of skills that chartered accountants have are really valuable to the education sector. “It was a case of the right person, right place, right time,” Walmsley understates.

Transferable ACA skills

Walmsley points to the myriad other non-technical skills chartered accountants have that are needed in the education sector, such as the ability to communicate technical financial information in bite-size items that non-financial people understand. Also, he points out, there’s the ability to deliver difficult financial messages when necessary without “sugaring the pill”.

He says: “Familiarity with obsessive regulation is probably helpful too. As a managing partner for 15 years, the skills that come with that are beneficial too. Building networks, independent thinking, collaboration – those kinds of skills that chartered accountants have are really valuable to the education sector.”

Walmsley’s retirement is perhaps not as restful as he might have imagined. Apart from the minimum two days a week he spends at the Trust (usually more), he’s also still Chair of the Finance Committee of the Ted Wragg Trust, a MAT in Exeter, and Vice Chair of Devon Education Forum, the educational arm of the local authority.

Walmsley was initially surprised to have been nominated for and awarded an MBE, but he understood the value of the recognition for the Trust and is already leveraging the honour for the Trust and education in general: “[The honour] gives us a greater say in the sector. It gives me more of a chance to get the difficult messages across. The education sector’s got a lot of challenges, and if we can get our messages through then all the better.”

He wrote to the Lord-Lieutenant of Devon – who represents HM The King in the county, including duties involving the armed forces and presenting certain honours, medals and awards – to invite him to attend one of the Trust’s schools; he accepted and is due to attend in the near future.

Walmsley certainly doesn’t plan on coasting since receiving his MBE.

“What I’m particularly worried about is that we don’t rest on our laurels. We specialise in taking on schools in need and helping improve them. We are involved in a particularly financially difficult part of the sector, as so many of our schools are small, rural primary schools, and they are the schools that are most challenged. So, you can imagine, a lot of them have Victorian buildings with significant expenditure needed for repairs and maintenance. There are huge financial challenges.”

Walmsley is certainly making the most of his retirement, relishing the opportunity for a “Lancashire lad from working class background” to offer his professional skills and capabilities in the public sector.

“I’m a huge believer in the Institute,” he adds. “I really value my accountancy qualification. It’s opened all my doors. I still go on personal skills courses regularly. I use the networking opportunities and my contacts whenever there’s a particular technical challenge in my work. I find the Institute invaluable.”