Stephen Adcock

Steve taught History in three London academies, including two senior leadership roles. He has now been with United Learning for nearly 10 years, initially leading on curriculum and subject support and now as a Regional Director. Steve is also an Ofsted inspector. Steve has a Master’s in Education Management and has recently gained the National Professional Qualification for Executive Leadership.  Steve loves working for United Learning because it provides the chance to visit schools up and down the country and work towards ensuring that all pupils get a great deal when they step through our doors.

Sophie Alexis

Sophie is the Central Office Marketing Manager for Secondary Academies. Her role has several areas of focus that include assistance with marketing strategies, as well as support for recruitment, retention, digital marketing, continuous professional development and fostering networking opportunities within the Group.

Before joining United Learning a year ago, Sophie worked in education for over 10 years with previous roles in admissions, UK and international recruitment, further education colleges within London and more recently Marketing at a university in North London.

Ben Antell

Ben Antell is the recently appointed Director of Secondary Academies in United Learning. Before taking up this role, Ben was a Regional Director in the trust and previous to that an Executive Principal with a responsibility for schools in Bournemouth and London. Ben is passionate about school improvement and the belief that education is the key to social mobility and future success. Ben also works as an Ofsted inspector in the south-west and counts himself fortunate enough to have worked with some of the leading educationalists in the country through both his Regional Director, Executive Principal and Ofsted roles.

Catherine Barker

Catherine joined United Learning in 2015, having led performing arts faculties in London schools. She began her career as the first Teacher First music teacher in 2004. Now working in the Partnership Team, alongside support and advisory to the teachers in the group she also leads groupwide performance events, such as 'MUSICFest', ‘Carmen’, ‘Green Love!’, 'Zimbe!' and ‘Wassail!’– recognised at the Music Teachers Awards as ‘Best Classical Music Education Initiative 2018’.

An experienced music educator, Catherine holds an MA in Music Education from the IoE. In the trust she leads groupwide curriculum development for music and subject provision for Music and Drama teachers as part of the group initial teacher training programme, United Teaching. 

Alongside her groupwide role she currently is the President of the Music Teachers’ Association and has been appointed to the monitoring board for the DfE's National Plan for Music Education, having been on the original panel for the NPME in 2022. She is also Chair of Paddington Academy local governing body, a secondary school that has recently been recognised as Outstanding by Ofsted. 

Prior to teaching, Catherine was a scholar at the Royal Academy of Music and Trinity College, Cambridge, and has performed extensively including on Radio 3 and professional recordings as a cellist and singer. 

You can follow Catherine and the work in United Learning here: @United_Music1

Matthew Wynne

Matthew joined United Learning in November 2016. In his previous roles Matthew has served as a Primary Headtecher for nearly ten years. Over this period of time he led schools that were in an Ofsted Category, ensuring a rapid and focused improvement in all areas.

Prior to his appointment as a Headteacher, Matthew worked as a Deputy Head, leading Assessment, Behaviour and Curriculum.

Matthew started teaching in 1993. All of his teaching and leadership experience have been within areas of social and economic challenge, ensuring his focus has always been upon improving life chances and educational progress for all groups of pupils.

Tom Bennett

Tom Bennett was a teacher in the East End of London for thirteen years. Currently he is the Director and founder of researchED, a grass-roots, teacher-led project that aims to make teachers research-literate and pseudo-science proof.

Dominic Bergin

Dominic Bergin is an Executive Business Manager within United Learning. Dominic currently has responsibility for four Salford secondary academies. Dominic has worked for United Learning for over 5 years and before taking up his current role, Dominic worked as a Finance Business Partner at United Learning supporting schools in the North.

Dominic has worked in Finance for the majority of his career and is passionate about strong financial management and control whilst ensuring schools receive sufficient investment to ensure they can provide the best teaching and learning experience to enable the best outcomes for pupils.

Fiona Boulton

Fiona became Director of Independent Schools in September 2022. She originally joined the organisation in 1995 when it was the Church Schools Company; it later became United Learning. She was Head of Guildford High School from 2002 – 2022. Guildford High became a Teaching School in 2013 and Fiona was appointed an NLE, leading the United Learning Teaching School Alliance from 2013 - 2020.

She has a variety of Governance roles; she is an Associate Director of Cumbria University (since 01.06.21), she is on the Governing body of Epsom College (since 01.11.09) and she is a member of the ‘Learning Partners Academy Trust’. Fiona is on the Advisory Board of the School Partnerships Alliance and she has helped to establish the West Surrey Partnership of all the state and independent schools in the Guildford area. She was Chair of HMC in 2019-2020, and on the Advisory Council of the Institute for Ethical AI in Education (IEAIED) (2018 – 2021). In 2023, Fiona was awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours list for services to education.

Sir Jon Coles

Since January 2012, Jon Coles has been Group Chief Executive of United Learning.

Charlie Cutler

Since leaving the classroom, Charlie has spent more than 6 years in curriculum policy and development. She worked in curriculum policy at the Department for Education, leading research projects and engaging with thought leaders in the field. Since joining United Learning in 2019, Charlie has led the development of the primary curriculum, ensuring that it is well sequenced, is built upon United Learning’s evidence-informed pedagogies, and meets our teachers’ needs. She also has oversight of the secondary curriculum, ensuring consistency and progression from EYFS to KS3 and beyond.

Adriano Di Salvo

Adriano has worked for United Learning for 11 years, during this time he has worked as Head of Art at Kettering Buccleuch Academy and as a SLE across the trust. Adrian’s SLE work has allowed him to visit a number of our schools across the country, giving support on KS3 curriculum and helping to improve outcomes at KS4 and KS5.

During the pandemic Adriano led a team of teachers to design a key stage 3 art curriculum, create and record lessons for Oak National Academy.

Adriano has recently written for the NSEAD on how the trust is using the ARAEA checklist to improve diversity and representation across the United Learning art curriculum.

Adriano now joins the subject adviser’s team alongside his work as a lead practitioner at Kettering Buccleuch Academy.

Dino Di Salvo

Dino is Regional Director for the Yorkshire Cluster and Parkside Community College in Cambridge. He also holds the position of Principal at Kettering Buccleuch Academy, an all-through school which has improved rapidly under his leadership and has won a Pearson Silver Award this year for Secondary School Of The Year: Making A Difference. Alongside his other roles Dino has guided many of United Learning’s aspiring leaders through the completion of the group’s NPQH programme.

Shaun Dowling

Shaun’s background includes spells as a head of PE; a Director of PE and Sport in a specialist Sports College; deputy head in two secondary schools; and in a national role as Head of Raising Achievement for the Youth Sport Trust. As such Shaun is well placed to support subject leaders across the group in both improving their PE and school sport provision and in using sport to drive school improvement.

Brian Doyle

Clare Dutton

Darran Ellison-Lee

Darran has a wide range of achievements in Education, including leadership in both Primary and Secondary phases as well as in Special Education.

Darran was a National Leader of Education, leading one of the first national teaching schools and a federation of primary schools in the North of England. The teaching school under his leadership provided a wide range of school improvement work and was one of the first schools providing training for Schools Direct.

Darran has overseen growth of our primary schools, which now includes over 35 schools. Darran’s leadership of improvement work has secured enhanced quality of teaching, resulting in schools moving from Special Measures to Good, at times requiring him to step in as Exec Head or acting Principal to support. In addition,

Darran is Director with responsibility for the Trust’s support, challenge and accountability on Safeguarding, ensuring that United Learning meets Statutory requirements and that Safeguarding processes across the Group are robust and effective.

Tony Hayes

Tony started teaching in 2004 as a geography teacher and joined United Learning as the Geography Advisor in September 2016. Tony has worked in a number of different roles, including Head of Geography, Head of Humanities, Assistant Principal, Director of Humanities for another trust, and Lead Practitioner for Teaching and Learning. Tony started examining in 2006 and also became an SLE for teaching and learning in 2015 for the Cambridge Teaching network. Furthermore, Tony secured the geography accreditation for his department from the Geographical Association in 2013. In 2015 Tony was one of only 3 people to receive a joint award from the SSAT and the Geographical Association, as recognition for his ‘leadership and outstanding expertise in geography education.’

Fay Hayward

Sarah Horn

Sarah has over 12 years of experience working in secondary education in the South of the country. After starting as a geography teacher in 2010, she moved into middle leadership through a Head of Geography and then a Head of Humanities role.  In 2015, Sarah moved into the sphere of special education needs and was a SENDCo for over 8 years and has recently held an Assistant Principal position. Sarah currently works as the Secondary Inclusion Adviser for United Learning, which she initially began in 2021. She is passionate about providing strategic guidance and support to schools nationally on effective SEND provision, to reduce the attainment gap and ensure students with SEND thrive.

Suzanne Howard

Suzanne joined United Learning in 2012, having previously worked at the Department for Education. She is passionate about creating development opportunities for all staff in schools, and nurturing an inclusive environment, where diverse teams can flourish.  

Mariu Hurriaga

Mariu succesfully led Languages Departments for over 14 years at various non-selective and academically selective schools in England and held other whole school responsibilities.

Lauren Hull

Lauren joined United Learning in June 2021 as an Executive Business Manager across the Manchester Primaries Cluster. Her remit covers the strategic management of a range of services, including Finance, HR, Estates & Premises and H&S. She has worked in a number of support roles within educational settings for 14 years, spanning across primary, secondary and specialist provisions.

Having previously worked in the banking sector, Lauren was able to transfer her financial and operational management skillset and put it to use to ensure back-office services are as efficient and effective as possible in all of her schools, more recently developing a model for the clustering of support services across the cluster. Her passion lies within making a difference to pupils by being as resourceful as possible, in turn, enhancing the school experience for all stakeholders.

Professional development has always played a major part in Lauren's life goals and achieving her MBA in 2019 with Chartered Management status has been one of Lauren’s greatest highlights of her career. 

John Keech

John is the trust’s lead for SEND (primaries) and as a Specialist Leader in Education, works closely with all UL primary SENCos and their respective cluster leads. John was previously a Vice Principal where he led on Inclusion and Safeguarding. Within this role, John was responsible for the Personal Development of pupils. This involved being the school’s SENCo and overseeing inclusive provision for vulnerable pupils, including those with medical needs, EAL and those in receipt of Pupil Premium funding. John holds the NQPSL and has a Masters in Inclusive Education and Special Educational Needs, undertaking research based on inclusive provision for (International) new arrival pupils. John has extended this research with the University of Birmingham, where he is in the thesis stage of a doctoral programme. 

Doug Lemov

Ben Littlewood

Ben has worked in education for over 20 years, as a secondary school science teacher, Advanced Skills Teacher, senior leader and advisor. He joined United Learning as the Science Advisor in January 2016, before becoming Senior Science Advisor in 2018.

Ben has worked in several schools on developing science teaching, both as an AST and as a local authority advisor, as well as leading on teaching and learning across a whole school. Ben also has a MA in Education, with a focus in the impact of feedback on students learning.

Ian Miller

Jo Molyneux

Ben Newborn

Chris Prince

Chris is the Marketing and Communications cluster manager for the South Manchester Cluster, which covers William Hulme's Grammar School, Manchester Academy and Stockport Academy. Chris has worked in this role for the past three years and has been with United Learning for over eight years, having previously worked as Marketing and Communications Officer at Stockport.

Chris has previously worked in digital marketing, copywriting and broadcast news, and won United Learning's Support Staff of the Year at the group's Best in Everyone Awards in 2019.

Jed Queally

Jed joined United Learning in September 2013, recently completing his 10^th year and still enjoying the role as School Business Manager at Northampton Academy.  Prior to that he was a Bank Manager for HSBC Bank for 31 years.

Jed's school role includes looking after the support structure including Finance, Estates, IT, Operations, H&S, GDPR and Office Admin functions.  During his 10 years, he's tendered for many contracts including cleaning, photocopiers, telephony, minibuses, numerous furniture purchases and a golf zone.

Jed has also secured external funding to support internal refurbishment as the school PAN increased and has enjoyed the journey as Northampton Academy moved from good to outstanding at their last Ofsted inspection.  Jed is passionate about improving the environment, so it is a great place for staff to work and for our students to be proud of.

Jed has also supported other United Learning schools, both Primary and Secondary, to help them settle into or assist with major changes. He also mentors new Business Managers within the Group.

Christine Raeside

Chris Raeside is a secondary Regional Director for academies in the south. She joined United Learning in September 2017 following 7 years working for Ofsted as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors. For her last three years with Ofsted, Chris was a senior HMI, working in the South West, overseeing and quality-assuring inspection throughout the region. She is an experienced secondary senior leader, working in schools and local authorities in two London authorities and, since 2005, in Hampshire, where she lives.

Jennifer Reynolds

Jen joined United Learning in 2018 and has worked in Primary Education for over 30 years, much of the time combining teaching with other roles. Jen is a former English Advisor for the CAM Academy Trust and facilitated writing moderation with large clusters of schools throughout Cambridgeshire sharing her work at Beyond Levels conferences. She is also a former English Adviser for Cambridgeshire and tutor on the PGCE and GTP at the Faculty of Education, Cambridge University. Jen has researched several areas of children's literacy, including gender differences in responding to texts and has written guest blogs for The Chartered College and No More Marking on the use of Comparative Judgement to assess writing. She was a researcher on the Cambridge University government funded project, ‘Raising Boys’ Achievement’, specifically researching the role of drama and talk to develop writing.

Alicia Shanks

Alicia joined United Learning as a History Adviser in 2021, offering direct support to schools in the North of England. She has a keen interest in the education sector which resulted in her completing her BA Hons degree in History and Education Studies and led to her developing this further by completing an MA in Education. Alicia has worked in several roles throughout her career so far including Head of History, Head of Humanities and Lead Practitioner with whole school teaching and learning responsibilities. During the pandemic she also supported remote learning for all pupils nationally by creating and filming lessons for Oak Academy.

Cath Smith

Cath has been Principal of The John Roan School since 2018, overseeing the TUPE transfer of the school to United Learning in 2019. Over the past few years, Cath has been instrumental in transforming the look, feel and performance of the school.  She describes the result of this process being “a fabulous, skilled, ambitious learning community which is central to all the school improvement work that we are undertaking.”

Prior to The John Roan School she was Headteacher of Bow School in Tower Hamlets and led it through a rapid expansion, a move to become a mixed school, the introduction of a Sixth Form, and a complete BSF rebuild.  Cath established The Tower Hamlets Education Partnership in 2016, responding to the need in Tower Hamlets for a borough-wide, cohesive approach to CPD and school improvement in the changing political environment of the time.  She is also a primary school governor and a trustee of several charities working to bring the Arts into schools.

Mark Stephenson

Mark joined the Primary team at United Learning in September 2019 as Maths Advisor supporting schools mainly in the South and the Midlands. Prior to joining the Primary team, Mark was a primary school teacher and maths subject lead for over 10 years in schools in Westminster and Hammersmith & Fulham, one of which was Langford Primary School, which is also part of the group. Mark has completed the NPQSL and is accredited as both an NCETM Professional Development Lead, and School Development Lead.

Jill Todd

Amanda Whitehead

Tanya Wilkings

Having joined United Learning in 2018, Tanya has dedicated herself to making a positive and tangible impact on the schools she serves as Executive Business Manager for the South East London Cluster.  Contributing to the Group’s clustering strategy through the creation of a successful cluster structure with effective systems, processes and clear strategic direction has been an achievement that Tanya considers a great privilege.  Being part of the incredible turnaround story of all three of her cluster schools has been her most exciting employment journey.  Tanya has also had the pleasure of supporting other United Learning clusters and schools as they strive to achieve in their own journeys of school improvement.

Tanya has worked in the education sector since 2007 and specifically in executive school business management roles since 2012.  Improving the school experiences and opportunities of young people across London has been her driving force and is what motivates her high expectations and strategic approach to the running of the business sections of all the schools she has worked for.

Leon Wilson

Leon Wilson currently works as a Regional Director in United Learning and an Executive Headteacher for The Hurlingham and The Elms Academies. Leon joined United Learning as Senior Vice Principal at The Hurlingham Academy in 2015 and was subsequently promoted to Headteacher in April 2016. He took the school from 42% A*-C in 2014 to 93% 4+, 88% 5+ and 48% 7+ in 2022. This went from a sink school in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to the highest achieving state school in the borough in 2022 and the 9th best school in the country for progress (+1.32) the same year. The Elms Academy also achieved its best ever results in 2022 with a progress score of +0.73, ranking number 1 in the borough of Lambeth.

Leon champions high quality teaching and learning in all of his schools. He believes that children deserve the teachers with the best subject knowledge, the deepest passion for teaching their 
subject, the greatest willingness to serve children and the highest aspirations for them. There is a no excuse culture for students in which he expects them to learn, make progress and achieve incredible results regardless of their socio-economic, ethnic or family background.