Members
| Position | Name | Experience |
| Chair | Andy Hayman | Is a retired Chief Constable who has led two different police forces. His responsibility was to provide leadership to organisations with multi million pound budgets and as Assistant Commissioner, in charge of Royalty protection and Counter Terrorism and he was directly accountable to the Home Secretary and Prime Minister. Since his retirement he has advised company CEOs on strategic planning and security related matters. In the academic arena he was a member of Anglia Ruskin University board for ten years and is now a Visiting Fellow. He was elected Chair in January 2010 and has been privileged to retain that position since that date. He has been living in the area since 1990. He was awarded the CBE and QPM in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2006 and 2004 respectively. |
| CDET | Revd Rob Merchant | TBC |
| Academy Headteacher | James Saunders | James is the headteacher of Honywood School, a local Secondary Academy. He joined Honywood in 2018 after leading a local cross-phase teaching school and Challenge Partners school improvement hub, working with schools across Essex. James holds a degree in Music and an MA in Electronic Media and, prior to teaching, worked as a freelance sound, graphic and web designer. James later retrained as a computing teacher; a subject he continues to teach as Headteacher. James has a deep interest in technology and, in 2014, was one of 50 people globally who were selected to work with Google and awarded the status Google Certified innovator. He served on the ethics committee at UCL between 2017 and 2020 and is a founding fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching and fellow of the RSA. James is also a Trustee of a local primary school Trust and is Vice Chair of governors at his children’s primary school. He has an MBA in Educational leadership and is a senior partner for Challenge Partners. |
| Education Consultant | Tim Cuerden | He has worked as an Education professional for 40 years at KS1, KS2 and KS3 and post graduate level. He was Deputy Head Teacher at an outstanding primary academy before he took a 2 year secondment with the local authority as a Mathematics consultant. He was then appointed as Director of the New Essex Teaching School. As part of the teaching school’s work with Initial Teacher Training he was asked to contribute to the Carter Review (Ref: DFE-00036-2015) on which the Government White paper (2016) is based. He is the founder of the only Teaching Apprenticeship Scheme in the country and we started our 4th cohort last September. He has also worked with Sir Andrew Carter and the DfE on the National Apprenticeship Scheme. He has also worked with the NCETM on a Maths project. Previously he has lectured on Primary Mathematics with the Essex and Thames Primary SCITT and has been chair of the executive committee. In 2014 he had the opportunity to work with a team on a project in Tanzania ass the mathematics expert. He has also worked with Essex Police and Crime Commissioner as a Restorative Justice Facilitator. |
MAT Directors
| Position | Name | Experience |
| *Chair | Andy Hayman | As above |
| *Financial skill set | Simon Gibbs | Is a director appointed by the church whose career has included being a Financial Analyst in the motor industry, Planning Manager for a diversified Trading Company ad latteraly as Managing Direcor of thier Zimbabwe operations. He has been self-employed for thirty years as a General Management Consultant and runs a small interior goods design and manufacturing business. He was intimately involved in the original conversion to Academy Status. |
| Financial skill set | VACANCY | – |
| *Personnel skill set | Mark Walsh | Is an IT professional with over 20 years’ experience. He has led in the areas of management, compliance, budgeting and project delivery. |
| Personnel skill set | VACANCY | – |
| *Business skill set | VACANCY | – |
| Business skill set | VACANCY | – |
| Vice Chair / *Education skill set | Hazel Steele | Initial career as a secondary school teacher and senior leader. Then moved into leadership training and facilitation across a range of programmes including working with the National Remodelling Team and National College for School Leadership and for the last ten years writing materials, facilitating training, mentoring and assessing for national school leadership programmes. Institute for Leadership and Management trained coach. A Member of the St. Nicholas, D’Arcy governing board before the school became part of the Canonium Trust and now a member of the Teaching and learning Council for Tolleshunt D’Arcy St. Nicholas as well as a director for the Trust. |
| Education skill set | Emma Jackson-Gray | Having studied art history at university and completed a master’s degree in museum and gallery education, I worked for Arts Council England, firstly as a project assistant and then Programme Manager for their flagship Creative Partnerships programme, managing projects and allocating funding to schools across Essex and Suffolk. Following the birth of my first child, I decided to go freelance to have more flexibility in my work schedule and was lucky enough to build a portfolio of projects working with various arts organisations and education programmes across the eastern region. Meanwhile, my husband and I took the decision to take his family farm back in hand; it had been previously been contracted out owing to the fact that no one in the previous generation had been interested in farming it. As our farming business has grown, I have taken on less freelance work along the way and mow work almost exclusively for our farming business with my husband, and we are now in our 11th year of running the farm together. Our first son was joined by two more and now all three of our boys are at Stisted, where I have been parent governor since 2016. I became Chair in 2018 and during that time led the governing body on its journey from being a single academy trust and into Canonium this autumn. I have a particular interest in how the key skills that underpin creativity can support curriculum development. I believe by focusing on a creative approach that promotes skills of resilience, resourcefulness and inquisitiveness and confidence and allowing imagination an collaboration to be at the heart of learning leads to positive outcomes for all learners, leaving them better prepared for success in the modern working world. |
CEO
| Position | Name | Experience |
| Chief Education Officer and Accounting Officer | Mike Walsh | Is the headteacher at Kelvedon St. Mary’s Primary Academy and has been for 9 years. he has been a headteacher for a total of 12 years. He has led the school to academy status, set up a specialist provision for autism and has developed the organisation to become a Multi Academy Trust. His school is currently rated Outstanding (02/16) by Ofsted. He is an active member of the management groups of several county wide education groups including teaching school alliances and Mat 2 Mat networks. He has supported school improvement in eight schools over the past five years. |