Our Board of Members

Our members are people that have been chosen for their extensive skills and experience in areas such as education, finance and asset management, some of whom may also be a member of a Local Advisory Board of one of our family of schools.

Hardip Begol CBE

Hardip Begol is a Board Member at Ofqual, the regulator of qualifications and exams, and serves as a Non-Executive Director at the Oak National Academy. He is also a trustee at the Education Policy Institute and a member of the International Ministerial Advisory Panel on Curriculum and Assessment in Northern Ireland. In August 2026, Hardip will join the Board of Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills.

He was the CEO of the Woodard Academies Trust from 2020-22. He spent most of his career as a civil servant at the Department for Education, where his roles included Director with responsibility for safeguarding, curriculum, qualifications and school accountability. He was Deputy Director for Special Educational Needs and Disability (2007-2010).

Hardip has also worked for Deloitte, KPMG Consulting, the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. He was awarded a CBE for services to education in 2017.

Hardip was born and raised in Hayes and attended Barnhill Community School and Haydon Sixth-Form.

Judith Hemery OBE

Judith Hemery is an Education Consultant and also Senior Adviser on Schools and Sport to the British Council. She worked for many years for the British Council, ultimately having overall responsibility for its work with schools, teachers and education authorities in the UK and in countries across the world.

Judith has a particular interest in professional development for teachers and others who work with young people and in improving learning outcomes for all young people. In 2000 she was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List for services to education.

Before doing a complete career switch and moving into education, Judith trained as a nurse and has a post-graduate qualification in neurological and neurosurgical nursing.

Karen Deacon

Karen Deacon is the Chief Executive of Queen Elizabeth’s Foundation for Disabled People (QEF) and as such provides strategic and operational leadership to the organisation which includes two registered Rehabilitation and Care Services, Mobility Services, the Retail Trading division and QEF’s Family of Charities.

Karen has past experience of managing large UK-wide education and social care facilities at Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) that includes older people care homes, a community living service and RNIB Loughborough College. Prior to this she managed a large complex service that included a school college and residential services at Young Epilepsy in Surrey.

For 7 years she had been a voluntary Director of the Joint Epilepsy council (JEC), actively leading campaigns for the improvement of people who live with epilepsy.

Pamela Stentiford

Pamela Stentiford is currently based in Malmo, Sweden, where she works for Patio AB an Intellectual Property Services company.

Before moving to Sweden she worked as the Deputy Director of Finance for the Crime, Police and Fire Group in the Home Office.

While based in the UK she worked in the Civil Service for 12 years and held a range of roles across a number of programmes, including the introduction of new local government grants, sponsorship of the Homes and Communities Agency, and management of a range of housing policies.

This has enabled her to develop a strong knowledge of central Government and specifically Government Finance.