Central Team

A qualified accountant with over 20 years finance experience.   Since completing her Accounting & Finance degree she has worked in many FTSE250 companies in a variety of finance roles.   Has significant experience of financial and management accounting, planning and analysis, strategic forecasting and staff management/leadership in private sector companies.

Joined Scholars Education Trust 2018 and has successfully transferred those skills and experience into the education sector providing financial insight and challenge where appropriate.

Responsible for Scholars Education Trust estate management across its 5 schools including, management of the site teams, planned preventative & reactive maintenance, health and safety compliance, management of capital projects, asset management and finance.

6 Years’ experience managing the health, safety & emergency planning for a local authority including; clienting and auditing of the councils housing maintenance, gas and water hygiene contracts, waste refuse contract, leisure services, playgrounds, grounds and cemetery maintenance along with coordinating of the councils response to borough wide emergencies.

15 years leisure management experience including; finance, company lead for technical services and health & safety, asset management, project managing & quality auditing.

Michelle has vast administrative and leadership experience which she utilises to full effect in her guidance and support for the office managers across the Trust.

Since appointment Michelle has introduced a communications platform which offers significant improvement in the management of many administration functions. In addition, Michelle has brought about significant change in the administration of school trips, lesson observations database and soon to be launched a bespoke online performance management system for both Teaching and Support staff.

Alison has worked for the Trust for a number of years and has enormous pride in her and the payroll team’s work.  Alison and her team ensure that staff are paid on time and most importantly accurately, alongside managing the Teaching and support pension scheme requirements and queries from staff.  Alison oversees and supports the HR administrative team.

Heather manages attendance across the Trust Schools to ensure all schools have excellent levels of attendance and students maximise their full potential.

Heather and her Team support families in ensuring the regular and punctual attendance of students and work proactively to remove barriers of poor attendance.  The robust attendance procedures and strategies in place, ensure safeguarding, improve outcomes for our students and support staff in managing persistent absence.

With over 25 years, combined, experience of working in education, Tom and Ollie have significant understanding of the challenges and demands of IT systems in schools.  They use this knowledge to support and enhance both teaching & learning and the administration in school, ensuring accessibility to services and the IT provision is exactly what the schools require.   

Across Trust approaches are embedded in all schools which supports our ethos of IT support being only “one click away”, whether it’s a personal visit or remote access to support each of the school’s onsite IT provision.  Tom and Ollie line manage the IT personnel in each school, supporting IT teams with regular visits, day to day assistance and managing large projects and centralised systems.  They both have a wide range of overlapping skill sets to make sure either will be able to help coupled with individual specialist foci that is used across the trust.  Ollie has a high-level knowledge of the Apple iPads (both management and educationally), Internet and cloud solutions (such as office 365 and iCloud).  Tom has significant expertise in windows management, scripting and the networking side of IT.