Meet the Trustees
Upton Court Grammar School, Foxborough Primary School and Trevelyan Middle School belong to the Pioneer Educational Trust. The Trust is led by the Board of Trustees. The Board members are directors and trustees of the charitable company.
The Department for Education's (DfE's) Governance Handbook sets out how governance is structured in an academy where the trust is a charitable company limited by guarantee.
An academy has two layers of governance:
- The members of the trust, who have ultimate control over the direction of the academy trust
- The governors, who are also the directors and trustees of the charitable company.
Functions of the Education Trust Board
- The Trust Board will take full accountability for the schools under its control.
- The Trust will delegate responsibilities for governance of the schools to the Local Governing Body (LGB). The Local Governing Body, of between 9 and 15 members (depending on the size of the school), and will be responsible and accountable for the following:
- Student Attainment
- Learning, and the Learning Environment
- Curriculum & Standards of Performance
- Sites and Buildings
- The Trust Board will retain all other responsibilities and specifically for Pay & Conditions, Human Resources and Finance and have a Strategic overview of the other areas of responsibility. The Trust board will have one sub-committee related to audit. All voting members of the Trust Board will attend all meetings.
- A member of the Trust Board will be made accountable for a particular area of the activity, and will be responsible for supporting the schools, and LGBs in delivery of their accountabilities.
- Audit will be a key part of the Board, and will cover both financial and other operational matters.
- It will appoint a CEO, who will be responsible for the day to day management of the Trust, the schools, and will be responsible for delivering the agreed strategic plan.
- Trust members will, initially, be appointed from the local governing bodies.
- The Trust Board will retain all accountabilities and responsibilities unless they are specifically delegated to another body.
- The term for Trust Board members would be three years, renewable.
Mr Nigel Miller
Chair of Trustees
Date of Appointment : 1 January 2014
Appointed by Trust Board
Trust Meetings Attendance 2017/18 6 out of 6
Finance Committee Meetings Attendance 2017/18 2 out of 2
Nigel Miller is an entrepreneur working in the extra-curricular activity market. He is the former Managing Director of World Challenge and is a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Director. Nigel is committed to giving young people the academic base on which to build their future but also believes in the importance of learning outside the classroom to widen their perspective on life. He was elected Chair of Governors in May 2013.
Mr Russell Ford
Trustee responsible for: Safeguarding
Date of Appointment : 1 January 2014: Reappointed 8 December 2016
Appointed by Upton Court Grammar School Governing Body
Trust Meetings Attendance 2017/18 3 out of 6
Finance Committee Meetings Attendance 2017/18 1 out of 3
Business Interest: Director of Owen White Ltd, provider of legal services to Pioneer Educational Trust
Russell Ford is a partner in a commercial law firm based in Slough specialising in dispute resolution. He became a parent governor in 2010, having previously been a governor at a local primary school for eight years. He is also a trustee of a charity funding education support for young people in Slough.
Dr Mark Jervis
Date of Appointment: 29 November 2016
Appointed by Trevelyan Middle School Governing Body
Trust Meetings Attendance 2017/18 5 out of 6
Mark Jervis has been a parent governor at Trevelyan Middle School for six years and chair for two years, having completed the Chairs of Governors' Leadership Development Programme from the National College of Teaching & Leadership. He has also previously been a co-opted governor at a Maidenhead school, having been approached by the borough to help model good governance, particularly around analysis of data. Mark has worked in computing since finishing his Mathematics PhD; orignially in mathematical computation in the defence industry and most recently as a leader of a research and development team at the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer. Mark has three children in the Windsor three-tier school system.
Mr David Maitland
Date of Appointment : 1st October 2015
Appointed by Trust Board
Trust Meetings Attendance 2017/18 4 out of 6
David Maitland is a partner at Run the Change, specialising in transforming IT organisations to capitalise on the new IT trends of cloud, mobility, and social media. Prior to setting up his own business, he was Director Corporate Services at the Atomic Weapons Establishment responsible for HR, IT, Communications, Security, and Transformation. David’s early career was with United Biscuits, and Ford Motor Company in a range of international HR and IT positions. He has degrees in Psychology and Business Management and has been involved with Upton Court Grammar School, as a parent and governor for the last 8 years.
Mr Danny Sohal
Chair of Finance Committee
Date of Appointment : 2 November 2016
Appointed by Trust Board
Trust Meetings Attendance 2017/18 1 out of 6
Finance Committee Meetings Attendance 2017/18 2 out of 3
Danny is an established School Business Manager, having previously held senior management positions in the financial markets and more recently Further Education Colleges.
He currently has total strategic and operational responsibility for all non-teaching related functions including Finance, Human Resources, Procurement, Administration, ICT, Estates, Projects and all operational matters for the largest multi site primary school by budget share and pupil numbers in Brent,
He is committed to critically challenging and influencing the platform for which children and young adults will take their learning from, with a key interest of developing education infrastructure and strategies of learning outside the classroom .
He has an undergraduate degree in Business Management and postgraduate degrees in Finance and Investment Banking with Statistics.
Mr Mark Roper
Date of Appointment: 8 February 2017
Appointed by the Trust Board
Trust Meetings Attendance 2017/18 3 out of 6
Mark joins the Upton Court Trust Board with particular focus on the Strategic plan and metrics.
He was a Governor at UCGS, from 2010 to 2016. In this role he helped the newly appointed principal select her senior management team, supported the transition to academy status and acted as data Governor.
He was previously parent Governor at Our Lady of the Rosary, RC primary school, from 2003 to 2009.
He is a Director of Run the Change and Mathsmoves - an online source of resources for primary teachers to explain the fundamentals of Maths in an easy to understand way.
Mr Eddie Neighbour
Joint CEO
Date of Appointment : 1 September 2018
Trust Meetings Attendance 2017/18 6 out of 6
Finance Committee Meetings Attendance 2017/18 3 out of 3
Mrs Antonia Spinks
Joint CEO
Date of Appointment : 1 September 2018
Trust Meetings Attendance 2017/18 6 out of 6
Historic Trustees (Last 12 Months)
Mr Simon King
Date of Appointment : 5 March 2015
Date stepped down : 15 November 2017
Appointed by Trust Board
Chair of Audit Committee
Trust Meetings Attendance 2016/17 6 out of 6
Audit Committee Meetings Attendance 2016/17 4 out of 4
Simon King has spent his career in the private sector helping companies maintain good standards of risk management and comply with best governance practices. He is currently Head of Risk Management at the Ministry of Defence. He is a Chartered Accountant whose wife is a teaching support assistant, and they have two teenage sons.
Ms Anjali Ruparelia
Date of Appointment : 25 January 2015
Date stepped down : 20 July 2018
Appointed by Trust Board
Trust Meetings Attendance 2017/18 3 out of 6
Anjali Ruparelia is an accomplished Senior IT Managing Consultant with over 17 years’ experience in Project & Programme Management in various sectors including Communications, Industrial, Public and Financial, working in a world class consultancy firm. Anjali believes in preparing young people for life, enabling them to reach their potential through building social and life skills supported by a strong academic background. She was appointed on the Board of Trustees in January 2015.
Mrs Mercedes Hernàndez Estrada
CEO
Trust Meetings Attendance 2017/18 6 out of 6
Finance Committee Meetings Attendance 2017/18 3 out of 3
Mercedes Hernández Estrada has been involved in education in the UK for over twenty years. Born and educated in Spain she developed an interest in Languages and she completed a BA in Modern Foreign Languages and an MA in Anglo Germanic Philology at the University Of Oviedo in northern Spain. She moved to the UK in the late 80s and has worked in schools in the South of England since. She was a Lead Practitioner for Curriculum Design and Leadership for three years working with schools and Local Authorities in the South of England, from Plymouth to Kent. Before joining the school in 2010 she was a deputy headteacher at Tonbridge Grammar School, a Kent selective girls’ school after a move from Regent’s Park School in Southampton where she was an Assistant headteacher.
