The Department for Education (DfE) has appointed four new non-executive board members to serve for the next three years.
Naomi Eisenstadt, Steve Crocker, Rebecca George and Margaret Casely-Hayford will each earn £15,000 for around 24 days’ work per year.
It comes after Sir Kevan Collins was appointed lead non-executive board member last month. He had served on the board since Labour’s election in July.
The DfE’s board is chaired by education secretary Bridget Phillipson and “supported” by the lead member and other directors and senior civil servants.
Its main responsibilities are to provide “strategic and operational leadership to the department”, to scrutinise the delivery and performance of policy and to “challenge the department and its senior officials on how well it is achieving its objectives”.
Remuneration is £15,000 per annum per non-executive board member for an estimated time commitment of 24 days per year.
Appointees include trustee of Collins’s former charity
Eisenstadt is chair of the NHS Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board and an adviser to the Social Mobility Commission.
She is also a trustee of the Education Endowment Foundation, which Collins used to run, and an adviser to the Sutton Trust.
She is a Labour member, and served the Blair government as the first director of the DfE’s Sure Start Unit and as chief adviser on children’s services.
Steve Crocker is an improvement adviser to Bristol and Oxfordshire councils and runs his own consultancy. He also mentors the Isle of Wight’s director of children’s services.
He chairs the DfE’s SEND change programme advisory group.
Rebecca George was a managing partner at Deloitte who now serves as a non-executive director of the Metropolitan Police as a member and past president of BCS, the Chartered Institute of IT.
Margaret Casely-Hayford is a non-executive director of the Co-op group, on the advisory boards of SquarePeg and a patron of Leathersellers’ Academy Schools. She used to be chancellor of Coventry University.
She is also a member of the Co-operative Party, which has an electoral pact with the Labour Party.
Phillipson said she was “welcome our four new non-executive directors.
“Their collective experience brings renewed vigour to our mission to break down the barriers to opportunity.”
She also thanked outgoing non-executive directors Toby Peyton-Jones and Jack Boyer “for their dedication and service. Their contributions have been instrumental in supporting the department, and we are grateful for their commitment.”
Nobody who has ever actually taught then.