Our Members

What do our Members do?

Members are the signatories to the Trust’s Articles of Association which formalise the relationship between the Trust, its schools, and the Department for Education.

Members also have a responsibility to make sure trustees behave in accordance with the DfE Governance Handbook and fulfil their statutory role.

Our Trust ordinarily has three members:

David Sheldon

Chairman

David is a senior leader for the St John’s Ambulance charity and an experienced trustee and school governor. He began as a parent governor for Bromley Pensnett Primary School, where his own children were educated.He is a creative and innovative manager of transformative change and systems development across public and charitable sector services.

He has served as a chair of governors in both primary and secondary phases of education.

His commitment to working with children and families in challenging circumstances is hugely impressive.

Tim Reid

Member

Tim is Director of Education for the Diocese of Worcester. He has worked at the Diocese for several years as both Deputy Director of Education, a School Improvement Consultant and SIAMS Manager. Prior to this he served as headteacher of a Church of England Primary School.

Over this time, he has developed a strong vision for Church of England schools across the Diocese of Worcester and is deeply committed to developing learning environments where all children receive a high-quality education and live life in all its fullness.

He brings a broad range of experience to the role of Member, building trusting relationships and supporting the Trust to achieve strong academic outcomes whilst respecting our vision for education in a sensitive and appropriate manner.

Malcolm Frier

Member

Malcolm was a senior research scientist working in the UK foundry industry for 30 years before changing careers, setting up his own consultancy business as well as working for several educational agencies specialising in supporting SEN children and their families.

Malcolm is now primarily focussed in the pre-hospital emergency environment as a clinician, working frontline for the Emergency Ambulance Service.
Outside of work Malcolm is an experienced school governor. He served at Audley Primary School for over 25 years taking on all roles open to him from representing the school as part of an Education Action Zone to eventually Chairing meetings and panels such as appointment, disciplinary and or appeals as well as the routine Teaching and Learning, Finance and Staffing Committees.

For most of this time he was the Chair of Governors, guiding the school through an amalgamation through to joining the drb Ignite Multi Academy Trust. His last role was the Chair of the Trust’s East Executive Governance Group.

Throughout Covid pandemic, Malcolm has provided expert advisory support to the Trust around issues of public health, preventative measures, and local infection data. This has added to the robustness of the Trust Covid strategy and risk assessment.

Malcolm is looking forwards to aiding the Trust in developing further, as always with the wellbeing and achievements of the children and staff as his primary focus and concern.

Charlotte Brookfield

Member

Charlotte Brookfield is a senior lecturer at Cardiff University’s School of Social Sciences.

Her research falls broadly in the field of Education and specifically, she is interested in exploring and evaluating innovative approaches to engaging students with numbers and statistics.

Charlotte has extensive experience collaborating with local schools and colleges, providing research methods training for teachers, organising teacher CPD events as well as school visits to the University. Additionally, Charlotte has worked as an expert advisor for Qualifications Wales, contributing to the development of the new GCSE for Social Studies.

In her role as Co-Director for the Cardiff Q-Step Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Quantitative Methods, Charlotte has collaborated with Agored Cymru to develop level 2 and 3 accreditations in Social Analytics.

Charlotte has published in international journals on pedagogy and teaching practices, and she is also known for her work as a survey researcher, author of student-facing textbooks, and editor of the International Journal of Social Research Methodology.

In 2022, Charlotte’s leadership in relation to teaching and learning was recognised through the award of senior fellowship status from the Advance-HE in 2022.

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