Saffron Academy Trust chief executive Caroline Derbyshire has stepped down as chair of the Headteachers’ Roundtable policy group after four years at the helm.
Caroline Barlow, headteacher of Heathfield Community College in East Sussex, and Keziah Featherstone, executive headteacher at Q3 Academy Tipton and The Ladder School in the West Midlands, are now co-chairs, the group has announced.
Sabrina Hobbs, principal of St Martins School in Derby continues as a vice-chair, joined by Dr Kulvarn Atwal, executive head of two primary schools in east London.
And Andrew O’Neill, headteacher of All Saints Catholic College in west London, has also joined the non-party political group, which now has 17 school leader members.
Derbyshire, who is also due to step down from her trust role in August, said it had been a “great privilege” to “lead the influential work of a group of such inspiring and passionate school leaders”.
She said her successors were “bright and principled leaders who will continue with the HTRT mission of speaking truth to power and articulating the views of school leaders to ensure that the lived experience of those who work and learn in education is not forgotten when policy is formulated”.
Derbyshire added: “I began my leadership of this group in the midst of a pandemic crisis and I leave it in the early weeks of a new government with the hope that listening to the profession is now accepted practice.”
She will continue to be a member of the group, which was formed after a roundtable meeting in 2012 and “grew out of frustration regarding government educational policy”.
