Andrew retired from his role as the Regional Director for the West Midlands in the Department for Education in January 2025. This senior civil service role included oversight and responsibility for just under 2,400 schools across fourteen local authorities and several dioceses. His brief also included Children’s Social Care, SEND and Priority Education Investment Areas.
He was previously the Chair of the Teaching Schools Council, the organisation which helped to shape national policy, working with policy makers and teaching schools across the country to ensure every child, in every part of the country, had access to a great school. He is a Founding Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching and has worked closely with many headteachers and senior leaders as a coach and professional mentor.
Before that he was a primary headteacher for seventeen years in three very different schools, which included two secondments to schools in trouble. Andrew was also seconded for a year to work for Stoke-On-Trent City Council as an Assistant Director in the Children and Young People’s Directorate, leading a team of over 450 staff.
As he explores the next chapter, Andrew is building a portfolio of roles to continue supporting children and young people most in need in society. In addition to his role as chair of CDLT, he also does consultancy work as well as speaking engagements.
His Christian faith is an important part of who he is and what he does. He is a lay reader in the Church of England and on the leadership team of his local parish church.
In his spare time, Andrew loves climbing mountains (he has completed all the Wainwrights in the Lake District and been to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro) and long distance walking (including a 1000 mile pilgrimage across France and Spain on the Camino de Santiago). He plays the piano in a music band he leads and is starting to hone his jazz piano skills. He is a qualified ski instructor and can’t remember the last time he was bored!