Nick Blackburn, CEO, brought about Lingfield Education Trust after a period of successful headship and supporting other schools across Darlington.

Nick has led the growth of the Trust to 15 schools, and increasingly supports other schools and Multi-Academy Trusts across England.

Nick is also an experienced leadership coach, programme designer and quality assurer for school leadership programmes across the country.

Nick is a strong CEO – knowing and navigating the academy landscape well since the launch of the academies programme.

Rebecca Pavey is Deputy CEO and has worked at Lingfield Education Trust for over a decade. She has been an integral part of the growth and success of the Trust. Rebecca is an experienced leader who has a proven track record of rapid and sustained improvement in a number of schools. As part of her varied role, she oversees all areas of school improvement and attendance. Across her career, Rebecca has worked in North Yorkshire, Durham and Darlington.

Mark Dent is the Director of Education for Lingfield Trust Lingfield Trust

Joining the Trust in 2018 as an executive headteacher and school improvement lead, he was the founding head of our free school, Cambrai Primary School. Cambrai was judged outstanding in all areas at its first OFSTED inspection in 2024. Mark has been headteacher of two schools, both with resource bases and now supports schools within our Trust and beyond in their school improvement journeys as our Director of Education.

Mark has considerable experience in training and development and is also a lead OFSTED inspector.

Kath Hull, CFFO for Lingfield Trust, is a qualified CIMA accountant with over 20 years accounting experience, the last 15 of which have been within the Education Sector.

Kath has significant experience of supporting schools with their financial management and budgeting, and has supported the CEO in ensuring the Trust has strong financial management, at all levels of the organisation. Her vision is to always align the financial planning to the vision and priorities of the school and trust, to ensure finances are an enabler, and not a block to achieving the key objectives for our pupils.

During her career Kath has also gained experience and qualifications in HR, School Business Management and H&S.

Hannah is the HR Manager for Lingfield and is CIPD qualified. She has significant HR experience from the care sector before joining the trust in 2019. Hannah is highly skilled in supporting all employees, as well as our school leaders to ensure Lingfield trust recruits and retains the best staff who are dedicated to making a difference to our children’s lives.

Beth is the Trust Adminstrator and PA to the CEO. She recently joined the trust following the successful completion of her apprenticeship, and has experience of the education sector.

She provides key administration support to the central team across finance, HR, governance and marketing, and is your first point of contact if you would like to get in touch to find out more about Lingfield Trust.

Helen joined Lingfield Education Trust in September 2023 as Head of Finance.

She is a Chartered Management Accountant who qualified whilst working for a multinational company where she held a number of management accounting positions. Helen began working in school finance in 2013 and has held on number of roles in education including, finance and business manager in both maintained and single academy trust and latterly CFO of a small multi-academy Trust.

Emma has worked in education for over 20 years. She has experience of working in a range of schools with very different social and economic backgrounds.

Emma has spent a number of years as a serving head teacher and a senior leader and currently holds the position of Regional Hub Director.

Emma currently leads on governance across the Trust.

Kieran Pavey is Lingfield Education Trust’s Regional Hub Director for the North and the Executive Head Teacher of Vane Road and Woodham Burn Primary Schools, Newton Aycliffe.

He has a proven track record of school improvement having been Head Teacher of 4 different schools. Kieran strongly believes that school to school collaboration lies at the heart of effective school improvement. He has worked in schools across the North East, including schools in Gateshead, Darlington and Durham Local Authorities.

He is a NPQ facilitator and Expert Support Provider for the National Institute of Education and provides support for ITT students for the Faculty of Education at Durham University.