About

Lord Lingfield was knighted in 1993 for his services to education and created a Peer for life in 2010. He has been a teacher, researcher, lecturer and education policy maker. In the 1990s he was a senior adviser in education to the government and in charge of the policy of independence for state schools, and was Pro-Chancellor of Brunel University from 2006-13. He is author of the Lingfield Report on Professionalism in Further Education, and currently Chairman of the Cadet Vocational Qualification Organisation, CVQO, and the English Schools’ Orchestra.

Dawn is an experienced CEO, Non Executive Director, trustee and advisor to Government in the area of Further Education. She is the current Chair of the World Federation of Colleges and Polytechnics. She was Chief Executive and Principal of Burton and South Derbyshire College (BSDC) until July 2024, leading the organisation through more than a decade of transformation resulting in a truly global college offering a range of bespoke and innovative further education in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Asia.  She has extensive experience in senior positions at board level  across a number of national groups and a PLC.

She has received numerous awards throughout her extensive career in technical and professional education including Principal of the year from the Centre for Excellence in Leadership, leadership in race equality award from the Network for Black and Asian Professionals and Highly commended in the Prince Philip Medal award for her professional accomplishments. She is a graduate of Oxford Brookes University, has had a successful international career, is a published author and earlier in her FE career was a successful WorldSkills Chief expert and training manager for WorldSkills UK, for which she received an OBE.

Dawn was promoted to CBE in 2014 and became a Deputy Lieutenant for the West Midlands in 2022.

Chris Jenks is a sociologist. He has published thirty books and numerous articles and chapters in books, many on the topics of education, childhood and culture. He has taught at every level from primary through to postgraduate, and was Head of Department, Professor and Pro-Warden (Research) at Goldsmiths College, and Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Brunel University. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Trondheim, Norway and has been External Examiner at over ten UK Universities.

Crawford joined Hawk Training in 2001 and has worked in both a training and commercial capacity. He assumed the role of Managing Director in 2016 from his previous role as Commercial Director. Hawk has supported thousands of learners on Apprenticeship and CMI-accredited management programmes and works with around 400 employers across a range of vocational sectors in both the public and private sectors. Sectors include Business Administration, Early Years, Improving Operational Performance, IT, Learning and Development, Management, Team Leading and Warehousing and Storage. Hawk enables young people to secure apprenticeship positions whilst supporting organisations to recruit apprentices and enhance their succession planning as well as upskill existing staff. Following inspection in September 2013, Hawk became the first independent learning provider in the country to be graded ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted under the then common inspection framework. In 2017, the organisation became the first independent learning provider to gain membership of the Chartered Institution for Further Education.

Crawford is a member of the AELP London Advisory Board and the AELP Strategic Forum. He is also a member of the Chartered Institution for Further Education.

Rajinder Kaur Mann OBE DL is the former Chief Executive of the Network for Black and Asian Professionals and the former Executive Director of the Black Leadership Initiative. She was awarded an OBE for her services to the BAME community in 2011, an Honorary Doctorate from Wolverhampton University in 2013 and installed as a Deputy Lieutenant for the West Midlands in 2020. Rajinder has served on a variety of national committees and has a wealth of experience spanning the education sector.

Dr Sam Parrett CBE is the Group Principal and CEO of London & South East Education Group.

Sam was appointed Principal of Bromley College in 2010, overseeing a merger with Orpington College the following year. Then in 2016, she led the country’s first three-way College merger, bringing together Bromley College, Bexley College and Greenwich Community College to form London South East Colleges – which now has over 13,000 students, c1000 staff and a total group turnover of £60m.

Strong progression into college has been supported by Sam’s successful establishment of a multi-academy trust which includes eight alternative, special and mainstream schools.

London & South East Colleges Group, headed up by Sam, was established in 2017 as the overarching organisation encompassing London South East Colleges, London South East Academies Trust and an apprenticeship provider – London Skills for Growth.

Sam started her career in the HR sector. She then managed a training provider and worked for a funding agency before joining the FE sector in 1997. She took up posts in two colleges before being
appointed Principal at Bromley in 2010.

Sam is a fellow of the CIPD and a fellow of the RSA, as well as a Vice-Chair of Mixed Economy Group (MEG). She was awarded an OBE for services to Further Education in 2016 and achieved her Doctoral Degree in Education in 2019. Following this, Sam became a National Leader of Further Education (NLFE) – one of just eleven in the country and was appointed as an advisor to a new independent group, set up to support disabled students – Disabled Students’ Commission. She was recognised as TES FE Awards 2020 Leader of the Year.

Ian Pryce has been Principal & Chief Executive of Bedford College since 1998, having joined the College in 1996 as Finance Director. He was previously a regional Finance Director at the Further Education Funding Council and has also worked as a Director or Senior Manager in retail, electricity generation and local government in Liverpool, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Northamptonshire. He is a fellow of the accountancy body CIPFA and a Syndic of the University of Cambridge. He was one of the founder members of the 157 Group, founding Chair of the Bedford Free School and was awarded a CBE in the 2011 Queen’s Birthday Honours. In August 2017, the College merged with Tresham College to form The Bedford College Group.

Liz Bromley is CEO of NCG. Before joining NCG in 2019, Liz worked in Higher Education for more than 20 years, holding senior roles at the Open University, Salford, Goldsmiths and the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) where she was Deputy Vice Chancellor. Liz was also CEO of University Alliance during 2018, on a secondment from UCLan.

First in the family to go to University, Liz studied English Language and Literature at Worcester College, Oxford. She has been a passionate advocate for social equality and for widening access to all forms of education, in practical as well as in policy terms, throughout her career. Liz is well known across the education sector for leadership development, positive change management, entrepreneurial leadership, improving the student experience, and for making things happen.

Liz holds a number of non-executive roles, which include English Heritage (member of the Remuneration Committee), the Sir John Brunner Foundation (member of Audit and Remuneration Committees); and has recently joined the Newcastle Hospitals Foundation Trust.

Lesley is the Executive Director of CIFE leading on the development of the organisation and the Membership. She also serves as an independent Council Member.

Lesley has worked in the education and training sector for the majority of her career. Prior to her appointment as CEO and Principal for The Trafford College Group, she was Senior Vice President and Senior Responsible Officer for Pearson, with responsibility for qualification standards, quality and the awarding of all academic and vocational qualifications. She was also responsible for the development of all vocational qualifications worldwide. Lesley joined Pearson from the Association of Colleges (AoC) where she was Deputy CEO and led on UK and international education policy, AoC Create and business development. Lesley has also held senior positions in the Learning and Skills Council and the Adult Learning Inspectorate.

In 2016 she became Chair of the newly formed UK Skills Partnership Board, a network of the UK’s leading education sector organisations and which was established to promote the development of vocational and technical skills internationally. She is a member of the DIT’s Ministerial Education Sector Advisory Group and British Council’s Education Advisory Board. She is also an advisor to a large tech based education organisation specialising in apprenticeship. In 2018 Lesley was a member of the Prime Minister’s trade delegation to China and she has worked extensively overseas advising governments on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).

Lesley is a Trustee for two education charities, Helena Kennedy Foundation and CVQO.

In 2015 Lesley was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to education, and in 2023 was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her service to education and charity. She is also a fellow of the Chartered Institution for Further Education

Sarah currently manages operations and programme development for CIFE.

Sarah has worked in Further Education for the majority of her career. She has spent the last decade in senior college management roles focused on corporate relationships, industry-based curriculum, partnership working and international development. She has significant experience of external stakeholder engagement and technical expertise on programme development, in particular around collaboration with large corporates, education funding and policy, and apprenticeships.

Sarah led on the establishment and growth of an apprenticeship academy training multi-skilled engineers for a large automotive manufacturer and the supply chain. She also played an important role in developing international education for visiting students and in establishing a technical college in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Sarah represented the skills and education agenda within a number of key strategic groups while in her college leadership and management roles. In October 2021 she split her roles to support on policy, accreditation and professional recognition programmes for The Chartered Institution of Further Education (CIFE) on a part time basis and now focuses full time on supporting the development of CIFE and other not-for-profit and charitable organisations allied to education, skills and professional development.

Prior to moving into further education, Sarah spent seven years in the fields of technology publishing and professional membership, working internationally and in the UK.

Geoff hails from Sutton Coldfield. He graduated in Politics from Liverpool University and after part-time teaching obtained his first full time job at South Trafford College. He moved into LEA administration with Northants County Council, was FE Officer for Birmingham and then Director of Education at Bexley London Borough. As incorporation beckoned, Geoff joined the Further Education Funding Council. He was responsible for developing the approach to achieving College mergers and was credited with piloting the way out of the franchising crisis.

After helping to set up the Learning and Skills Council, Geoff joined New College Nottingham and became CEO and Principal following Dame Pat Morgan-Webb. After a decade, Geoff stepped down from full-time roles to pursue diverse interests including spells as Chair of the Information Authority, interim CEO of the Education and Training Foundation and General Secretary of the Principals Professional Council.

Geoff was knighted for his services to FE in the Queens New Year Honours 2012.

The Honorary Fellowship of the Chartered Institution for Further Education was conferred upon Sir Geoff at the Admissions Ceremony in March 2018.
Geoff comments; ‘receiving the Institution’s Fellowship was indeed an honour. Being recognised by the Body that has championed the autonomy and strength of leading FE Colleges and Training Providers is humbling. I particularly valued the citation that said my award was “in recognition of extremely distinguished services in the cause of further education in this country” ’.

The opportunities presented by the FE & Skills White Paper need to be grasped. The direct expertise of our member Colleges and Training Providers will be paramount in advocating for the autonomy and professionalism of our sector which is the raison d’etre of the Institution. But Fellows can bring to bear experience and lessons learned – sometimes painfully – from past legislative disappointments.

I look forward to playing my part in that noble cause!

Dame Ann Limb DBE DL FRCA FCFE is a passionate advocate for adult and further education and one of the sector’s long-standing and steadfast campaigners. Following graduation and a period of training and research in education, Ann’s career in FE began in 1976 as a part-time lecturer in modern languages & ESOL at what is now The Manchester College. A proud Mancunian by birth, she spent a decade working in colleges in the north and Derbyshire, moving through every teaching and management grade, before becoming Principal Milton Keynes College in 1986, when there were but a handful of women FE College Principals.

Under Ann’s leadership, Milton Keynes College grew tenfold, student achievement rates improved significantly, and the college was transformed from one judged to be ‘in special measures’ to ‘a good college with significant outstanding features including strategy, governance and leadership’. Highlighted by the Conservative government in 1992 as an exemplar for incorporation, the college was also at the forefront of much pioneering curriculum design and innovative employment practice – leading the way in student centered learning and staff welfare provision. At a national level, as well as co-chairing the adult education initiative that became the ‘Campaign for Learning’, in 1991, Ann was founding Chair of the Network for Women Managers in FE – now the Women’s Leadership Network.

During Ann’s second principalship at Cambridge Regional College between 1996-2001, Helena Kennedy’s seminal report on access to higher education for disadvantaged FE students, ‘Learning Works’ was published. The Labour government’s failure to address this issue impelled Ann to found – and personally finance – the independent educational charity, Helena Kennedy Foundation, which over the last 20 years has supported almost 2000 FE students to obtain a university degree. Ann’s move, at the start of the millennium, into the senior levels of the civil service, overseeing the establishment of the UK government’s flagship e-learning programmes, learndirect, UK online and gov.uk, did not take her far from the orbit of Further Education. She has served on the boards of the Centre for Excellence in Leadership and the Learning & Skills Improvement Service – both forerunners to today’s Education and Training Foundation and was elected to the Council of the City & Guilds of London Institute where she was made a Fellow in 2002, has served as a Trustee, founding Chair of The City & Guilds Foundation, and in autumn 2021 will become the Guilds first woman Chair.

In 2011 Ann was awarded an OBE for her work in education and in 2015 received a CBE for public service. In 2019 she was honoured with the award of Fellowship of the Chartered Institution of Further Education – and sector body she believes will have an increasingly significant role to play in the leadership of skills and technical training throughout the 21st century. Dame Ann was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to young people and philanthropy.

David trained originally as an industrial designer and then gained a research degree at Nottingham University. He experienced the creative turmoil of the formation of the polytechnics while teaching and practising in Nottingham and went on to manage a yet more dynamic situation as a reforming deputy director of Dublin’s National College of Art and Design from 1975-1980. Returning to the UK he was principal at Winchester School of Art for eight years as well as chairman of an innovative consortium of art and design learning provision in Hampshire. He went on to merge London’s Central School of Art and Design with Saint Martin’s School of Art as the first head of the world-leading Central Saint Martin’s.

David describes the experience of bringing together two very different college cultures as “traumatic”, notwithstanding the fact that both were early members of what became the University of the Arts, London. In 1991 he moved on to the Royal College of Art under the exciting, if occasionally eccentric, leadership of Sir Jocelyn Stevens, learning more about the ruthless pursuit of excellence in two years than in the previous 20. David went on to be senior inspector for the (then) 70 further education colleges in south-east England as one of the first appointments of the new Further Education Funding Council. After the first inspection cycle in 1997 he set up the new Training Standards Council as chief inspector and CEO, with responsibility for raising the quality of work-based training funded by TECs and welfare-to-work programmes. The success of the TSC led to addition of work from FEFC and Ofsted in the formation of the Adult Learning Inspectorate which David founded and led until it, too, succumbed to government reorganisation in 2007. The ALI pioneered many new approaches to quality improvement through the creative use of inspection, in the UK and internationally.

From leaving government service until recently David was a partner in Beyond Standards Ltd. During that time he established and chaired the National Skills Academy for Social Care and was expert advisor to Lord Lingfield’s inquiry into raising teaching standards and qualifications in FE. He continued to work as an honorary advisor in the formation and achievement of chartered status for the Chartered Institute for Further Education. David sees the Institute as a means to raise the status of FE colleges as key generators of both wealth and community cohesion. Living in Hampshire, David continues his connection with the sector both through the Institute and as chair of the Quality and Standards Committee of City and Guilds.

Sally has been a senior leader in schools and colleges for the past forty years. She has led two successful, innovative colleges – Milton Keynes (1996-2003) and Activate Learning (2003-2022).  Whilst, at Activate Learning she and her team transformed a medium sized failing institution into a high quality, financially strong group of seven innovative colleges across three counties, three training providers, six schools and international work with a turnover of 150 million pounds.  To achieve this Sally led over four mergers and acquisitions.  Sally’s key interest is in creating learning organisations where people develop both their emotional and thinking capabilities.  To this end she developed a Learning Philosophy which become the cultural heart at Activate Learning.

She is a keen advocate for vocational education and became the President of the Association of Colleges in 2020 she has chaired and been a member of a range of local regional and national boards including Chairing the National Open College Network, Women’s Leadership Network, , AOC employment committee She coaches/mentors’ senior leaders and works with a range of organisations on culture change and redesigning the curriculum. She is a trustee of several education tech companies, Universities and charities in the education field. Dame Sally was made a DBE for service to education in the 2023 New Year Honours.

Marvin Cooke DL retired in July 2024 from his role as Executive Vice President – Manufacturing at Toyota Motor Europe.

Based in Brussels, he oversaw all of Toyota’s European Manufacturing Companies, Production Engineering, Logistics, Toyota Production System and Production Control functions, and was leading Toyota’s European Manufacturing team on a journey from being an Automobile Company to becoming a Mobility Company.

In 1991 Marvin joined Toyota Manufacturing in the UK as a Manufacturing Engineer and held numerous management posts progressing to Director of Production Operations in 2008. He spent a year as Director of Production Engineering at Toyota Motor Europe in Brussels during 2011, returning to Toyota Manufacturing UK as Deputy Managing Director of Vehicle Manufacturing in January 2012.

Marvin went on to spend two and a half years as Production Vice President at Toyota-Peugeot-Citroen Automobile in the Czech Republic returning to Toyota Manufacturing UK in 2017 as Managing Director.

Marvin assumed the position as Toyota Motor Europe’s Senior Vice President of Manufacturing in January 2020 and in addition, from October 2020, he was temporarily appointed President of Toyota Manufacturing France. As of January 2021, Marvin was promoted to Executive Vice President of Manufacturing in Toyota Motor Europe.

He started his career as an engineering apprentice at Pirelli Tyre Company. During his apprenticeship he studied at Burton & South Derbyshire College and graduated with an honours degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Nottingham Trent University.

After his graduation, he worked as an engineer for Pirelli at both Burton-on-Trent and Carlisle plants. Immediately before joining Toyota, Marvin worked as a consultant engineer within the food and drinks industry.

Marvin has a continuing passion for the development of people; championing technical apprenticeships, working with local Colleges & Universities and mentoring post graduate students to become industry leaders of the future.

A lifetime food enthusiast, Geoffrey Harrison started his hospitality career as a professional chef before launching his own catering business, Harrison Catering Services, in 1994. His hands-on knowledge of great quality food and his vast experience in business management and development gave Geoffrey the know-how and skills required to create a successful business that would thrive.

Geoffrey has been widely recognised and received numerous awards and accolades, including the prestigious Food Service Caterer of the Year (Catey Awards, 2010); Entrepreneur of the Year award, finalist (Ernst & Young, 2012); Honorary Doctorate from the University of West London International Business School (2012); the Special Award (EDUcatering Excellence awards, 2014); the Catering Lifetime Achievement Award (Cost Sector Catering Awards, 2015); Fellowship of the City & Guilds of London Institute (2017); and the Food Service Management (FSM) Lifetime Achievement Award 2019.

Under Geoffrey’s guidance, as Chairman, Harrison Catering has seen continued organic growth, expanding their market presence, achieving financial results along with a commitment to sustainability including social responsibility that  positively impacts the communities they serve. Geoffrey has a reputation for inspiring and encouraging people to develop resulting in a highly motivated and dedicated team that consistently delivers outstanding results. Geoffrey enjoys regular visits to site teams seeing first-hand the positive impact learning achieves.

Beyond his professional accomplishments, Geoffrey is a passionate advocate for education and philanthropy with the Geoffrey Harrison Foundation being formed in 2011 to encourage young people into the Hospitality industry through a 10-week skills course. To date it has reached over 2,229 students. With Geoffrey’s visionary leadership, Harrison will continue to innovate and grow with its unwavering core values of providing delicious, fresh, healthier catering delivered through a highly motivated team.