Tag: Taylor

  • New year’s honours knighthood for Cabot CEO Taylor

    New year’s honours knighthood for Cabot CEO Taylor

    A prominent academy trust leader will be knighted and a well-known professor of social mobility will be made a dame in the new year’s honours list.

    Dr Stephen Taylor and Professor Sonia Blandford are among 57 people working in or with the schools community in England recognised this year.

    Steve Taylor

    Taylor, the CEO of the 35-school Cabot Learning Federation and chair of the Queen Street Group of academy leaders will be knighted for services to education.

    “Since learning of this award, I have thought about all those colleagues in the Cabot Learning Federation and in the wider sector, whose work and successes have inspired me over the years to strive to do my best for the children we serve,” he said.

    “Anything I would count as an achievement has come about as the result of working in collaboration with great people I have had the privilege of knowing, in the CLF and beyond.

    “That includes a number of leaders in the Queen Street Group whose work in education has been recognised over the years, and I feel fortunate to have them as colleagues.”

    Professor Sonia Blandford
    Professor Sonia Blandford

    He added he was “extremely grateful for this honour and look forward to sharing the news with colleagues and sharing the experience with my family, whose support I never take for granted”.

    Blandford, professor of social mobility at Plymouth Marjon University and founder of the school improvement charity Achievement for All, will be made a dame.

    She said: “My thanks to all my colleagues, friends and family for your support and kindness throughout my career. I am proud to be a member of the teaching profession.”

    Leaders honoured

    Fifty-five other people who work in or with schools were recognised this year.

    Four will receive the CBE, 15 the OBE, 25 the MBE and 11 the British Empire Medal.

    Among those recognised are 17 current or former trust CEOs or school executive headteachers, nine heads, eight people from the charity or third sectors, six support staff, five council officials, three governors or trustees, two volunteers, two academics, a civil servant and an assistant head.

    Dr Nikos Savvas

    Dr Nikos Savvas, chief executive of Eastern Education Group, which runs nine schools, will receive the OBE.

    “This honour belongs to the whole of Eastern Education Group and to Suffolk,” he said.

    “What we have achieved here shows that world-class education doesn’t only happen in big cities.

    “Suffolk is leading the way, and this award is recognition of the people, partnerships and communities that make that possible. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished together.”

    Anita Bath

    Anita Bath, chief executive of the Bishop Bewick Catholic Education Trust has also been awarded the OBE.

    She said she was “deeply honoured and so happy to receive an OBE in the new year’s honours.

    “This recognition is not something I ever expected, and I accept it on behalf of the many dedicated colleagues I have worked alongside throughout my career.

    “I am particularly thankful for the opportunity to lead the Bishop Bewick Catholic Education Trust since its inception and I am so grateful to the leaders and staff who made this possible.

    “It was a brave leap of faith to bring all 39 Catholic schools together in such a short time and the commitment shown by its people has been very humbling indeed.”

    ‘Highly respected’

    Anne Dellar
    Anne Dellar

    Anne Dellar, the former chief executive of the Oxford Diocesan Schools Trust, will receive the MBE.

    Kathy Winrow, chair of the trust’s trustees, said: “During her time as our CEO, Anne always had an exciting vision for ODST.

    “She oversaw the MAT’s growth from two to 43 schools and her passion for ensuring every child had the opportunity to access the very best education was exemplary.

    “She is highly respected by trustees and headteachers within the MAT, and colleagues at national level. It was been a privilege to work with Anne over many years and see her ambition, generosity of spirit and care have a lasting and positive impact.”

    The full schools list

    Please note the spellings, titles and styles of each entry match what has been provided by government. If there’s a mistake or we’ve missed anyone out, please email [email protected].

    Please bear in mind we only cover the schools sector in England.

    Damehood

    Professor Sonia BLANDFORD, Professor of Social Mobility, Plymouth Marjon University. For services to Education. Wiltshire

    Knighthood

    Dr Stephen Peter TAYLOR Chief Executive Officer, Cabot Learning Federation. For services to Education. Somerset

    Commanders of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)

    Professor Teresa Mary CREMIN Professor of Education, The Open University. For services to Education. East Sussex

    Shazia Kauser HUSSAIN Director of Children’s Social Care, Department for Education. For services to Children and Families. Greater London

    Deborah Anna JONES Lately Executive Director Children, Families and Education Services, Croydon Council. For services to Children, Young People and Families. Oxfordshire

    Heather Ann SANDY Executive Director of Children’s Services, Lincolnshire County Council. For services to Education. Lincolnshire

    Officers of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)

    Anita Frances Maria BATH Chief Executive Officer, Bishop Bewick Catholic Education Trust, Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland. For services to Education. County Durham

    Jonathan BISHOP Chief Executive Officer and Executive Headteacher, Cornerstone Academy Trust, Devon. For services to Education. Devon

    Simon ELLIOTT Chief Executive Officer, Community Schools Trust. For services to Education. Greater London

    Emma Kate ENGLISH Executive Director, British Educational Travel Association. For services to the Youth and Student Travel Industry. Greater London

    Clare Elizabeth FLINTOFF Lately Chief Executive Officer, Asset Education, Ipswich, Suffolk. For services to Education. Suffolk

    Linda Susan JONES Chief Executive Officer, Prospere Learning Trust. For services to Education. Cheshire

    Carolyn MORGAN Lately Chief Executive Officer, The Ascent Academies’ Trust, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear. For services to Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. County Durham

    Gaynor Alison RENNIE Lately Headteacher, All Souls Church of England Primary School, Heywood, Lancashire. For services to Education. Greater Manchester

    Paul Thompson RICKEARD Ecumencial Canon, Cathedral of Newcastle upon Tyne and Chief Executive Officer, Durham and Newcastle Diocesan Learning Trust, Tyne and Wear. For services to Education. Northumberland

    Dr Nikolaos SAVVAS DL Chief Executive Officer, West Suffolk College, West Suffolk Trust, and Eastern Education Group, and Principal Abbeygate Sixth Form College, Suffolk. For services to Further Education. Suffolk

    Timothy William SHERRIFF Vice-Chair, Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors. For services to Education. Lancashire

    William George Stewart SMITH Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Greenshaw Learning Trust. For services to Education. Oxfordshire

    Thomas Brendan TAPPING Chief Executive Officer, Bishop Chadwick Catholic Education Trust, Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear. For services to Education. County Durham

    Victoria Ann WELLS Lately Director of Sport, Youth Sport Trust, Loughborough, Leicestershire. For services to Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Worcestershire

    Rachel Emma WILKES Chief Executive Officer, Humber Education Trust. For services to Education. East Riding of Yorkshire

    Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE)

    Olusola Oluronke Anike ALABI Director, Exam Success Education Centre. For services to Education. Essex

    Oluremi Morenike ATOYEBI Headteacher, Osmani Primary School, London Borough of Tower Hamlets. For services to Education. Greater London

    Helen Victoria BINGHAM Early Years Practitioner, Aspire Academy Trust, St Austell, Cornwall. For services to Early Years Education. Cornwall

    Rebecca Jane BOLLANDS Head Teacher, Earlson Primary School, Coventry. For services to Cultural Education in the West Midlands. Warwickshire

    Georgina BURROWS (Georgina Stafford) Senior Teacher, Rumworth School, Bolton, Greater Manchester. For services to Education. Greater Manchester

    Mervin CATO Head of Secondary Behaviour Support Service, Enfield Council. For services to Education. Greater London

    Judith Lesley CHARLESWORTH Lately Chair, Barnet Special Education Trust, London. For services to Education. Hertfordshire

    Eileen Gillian CLARK Vice-Chair, Pickwick Academy Trust Board and Chair, School Improvement Committee. For services to Education. Wiltshire

    Lucy CONLEY Lately Chief Executive Officer, South Lincolnshire Academies Trust. For services to Education. Lincolnshire

    Kathryn Anne CREWE-READ Lately Headteacher, Bishop’s Stortford College. For services to Education. Shropshire

    Edison DAVID Executive Headteacher, Granton Primary School, London Borough of Lambeth. For services to Education. Greater London

    Jacqueline Anne DELLAR Lately Chief Executive Officer, Oxford Diocesan Schools Trust. For services to Education. Berkshire

    Andrea ENGLISH Lately Executive Headteacher, North and South West Durham Learning Federation. For services to Education. County Durham

    Margaret Antoinette FISHER Lately Chair of Governors, Dorridge Primary School. For services to Education. West Midlands

    Fiona Mary GEORGE Trustee, Rumbletums Community Cafe, Kimberley, Nottinghamshire. For services to Special Educational Needs. Nottinghamshire

    Beth GIBSON Head of Attendance and Inclusive Pathways, Birmingham City Council, West Midlands. For services to Education. Warwickshire

    Vanessa Marie GRAUS (Vanessa Langley) Headteacher, Arbourthorne Community Primary School, Sheffield, South Yorkshire. For services to Education. South Yorkshire

    David John GURNEY Chief Executive Officer, Cockburn Multi- Academy Trust, Leeds, Yorkshire. For services to Education. West Yorkshire

    David William HUDSON Lately Headteacher, Royal Latin School, Buckinghamshire. For services to Education. Oxfordshire

    Amanda KING Early Years Strategic Lead, Warwickshire County Council and Coventry City Council. For services to Early Years Education. Warwickshire

    Michael Andrew LONCASTER Lately Headteacher, Molescroft Primary School, Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire. For services to Education. East Riding of Yorkshire

    Karen RATCLIFFE Lately Headteacher, Harton Primary School, South Shields, Tyne and Wear. For services to Education. Tyne and Wear

    Kylie Melissa SPARK Chief Executive Officer, Inspiring Learners Multi-Academy Trust, Cheshire. For services to Education. Greater Manchester

    John Francis TOWERS Headmaster, Barrow Hills School, Godalming, Surrey. For services to Education. Surrey

    Rachael WARWICK Lately Chief Executive Officer, Ridgeway Education Trust, Oxfordshire. For services to Education. Oxfordshire

    Medallists of the Order of the British Empire (BEM)

    Jake Oliver ARMSTRONG Careers Leader, Addey and Stanhope School, London Borough of Lewisham. For services to Education. Greater London

    Amila BEGUMAHMED (Amila Ahmed) Teaching Assistant, Cyril Jackson Primary, London Borough of Tower Hamlets. For services to Education. Greater London

    Kelly CLARKE Inclusion Manager, Hanson Academy, Bradford. For services to Education. West Yorkshire

    Annabel Susan Alice GITTINS Chair, Association of Senior Children’s and Education Librarians. For services to Young People. Shropshire

    Frances Elizabeth HILL Caretaker, John Ruskin School, Coniston, Cumbria. For services to Education. Cumbria

    John Melvyn JOHNSON Volunteer, Wolverhampton Grammar School, West Midlands. For services to Education. West Midlands

    Susan Renee MARSHALL For services to Education and to the community in Weston-super-Mare. Somerset

    Bhajan MATHARU Assistant Headteacher, Deanesfield Primary School, London Borough of Hillingdon. For services to Education and Early Years. Greater London

    Lisa RIDING Head of the Speech and Communication Specialist Resource, St Thomas à Becket, Wakefield, West Yorkshire. For services to Education. West Yorkshire

    Cindy Marie SUTCLIFFE Inclusion Manager, Hanson Academy, Bradford, West Yorkshire. For services to Education. West Yorkshire

    Brenda Irene WRIGHT Volunteer, St Issey Church of England Primary School, Wadebridge, Cornwall. For services to Education. Cornwall

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  • What Taylor Swift Can Teach Higher Ed About Marketing

    What Taylor Swift Can Teach Higher Ed About Marketing

    Few have mastered the art of anticipation like Taylor Swift. Even before her album The Life of a Showgirl hit the shelves, she had captivated audiences and dominated the conversation. What’s remarkable isn’t just her star power; it’s the deliberate marketing strategies that blend spectacle, authenticity and fan participation. For leaders, marketers and brand builders in any industry, her approach offers a master class in how to create momentum before a product is even released.

    Here are three standout observations from Swift’s launch strategy, along with actionable marketing tips you can put into practice.

    1. Blending High Production With Authentic Self

    Swift’s promotional rollout strikes a delicate balance between dazzling spectacle and grounded vulnerability. She teased the album with cinematic visuals—glittering production sets, stylized promo videos and bold aesthetics—while also poking fun at herself in playful, self-aware moments. She’ll show the sparkle, but also the cat hair on her dress.

    Marketing Tip: Pair your most polished campaigns with candid behind-the-scenes content. Letting your audience see the human side of your work builds trust and relatability, while the high production values set the tone of aspiration. The contrast makes each side stronger.

    Enrollment Marketing Tip: Mix in both staged and spontaneous content. Let your student ambassadors be themselves online and on tours. In your photos and social posts, let your content show some of the laughs, awkward moments and behind-the-scenes interactions.

    1. Using Cryptic Drip Campaigns and Symbolism

    From shifting color palettes to symbolic imagery and cryptic hints, Swift feeds her audience just enough to keep them speculating. Fans become detectives, dissecting every clue and turning the rollout itself into a participatory event. Bringing fans into her music in an intentional way is one of Taylor’s superpowers. Brands and even other industries adopt her motifs (orange, sparkles), amplifying her reach and making the symbols part of the cultural conversation.

    Marketing Tip: Don’t reveal everything at once. Use teaser elements such as colors, tag lines or subtle product hints to spark curiosity and invite your audience to co-create the narrative. Anticipation builds energy and energy drives engagement.

    Enrollment Market Tip: Add interactive content to everything you do, including countdown timers, digital scratch-offs and interactive maps to highlight your campus. Engage your prospective students as participants in the recruitment process.

    1. Extending the Album Into Experiences

    This launch was about more than just music. Swift staged limited theatrical events that mixed performance with commentary, offered exclusive vinyl editions with collectible packaging and framed her announcements as headline-worthy moments (like unveiling details on a podcast). The album is no longer just an album; it’s a multiplatform experience that fans feel they need to participate in.

    Marketing Tip: Think beyond the product itself. Create extensions—events, companion content or limited-edition releases—that transform your core offering into a cultural experience. Scarcity, exclusivity and immersion turn products into movements.

    Enrollment Marketing Tip: For every standard event you hold, there is an opportunity to create a special edition right alongside it. For example, before or after your normal local event or campus tour, hold an “exclusive session” for a certain group. Use your campus events, athletics, engineering or academic competitions to extend for a sneak peek or behind-the-scenes access for prospective students. Additionally, use events in your community, such as performing arts, minor league baseball, or an NFL game outing, to provide a special prospective student event. It does not need to cost much; be creative, test and adjust as you go.

    Taylor Swift’s approach to The Life of a Showgirl is more than entertainment marketing—it’s a blueprint for building anticipation, deepening connection and extending brand impact. By blending high production with authenticity, leveraging symbolism and drip campaigns, and turning her release into an immersive experience, she ensures that the conversation begins long before release day.

    For marketers in any industry, especially higher education, the takeaway is important: Key moments are no longer about flipping a switch on release day. They are about crafting an unfolding story, one that your audience wants to decode, share and experience with you.

    James Rogers is chief executive officer for 3 Enrollment Marketing.

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  • The PIE meets Taylor Shead

    The PIE meets Taylor Shead

    “Who am I? I’m one of the people that can see the future well before it’s created.”

    Meet Taylor Shead, the athlete-turned tech entrepreneur who is on a mission to change the way students access and absorb education in the 21st century.

    A former college basketball scholar, her original goal was to train as a reconstructive plastic surgeon alongside her sporting career.

    But like many students, while sports held her attention, she found STEM subjects inaccessible due to the dense language of mathematical equations and chemical symbols.

    “Frankly, I was a little annoyed,” Shead explains. “I was in the best private schools in Texas, and I thought: if I’m in this privileged position where I’m going to college level and I don’t feel prepared, then what about everybody else from all kinds of backgrounds?

    “As an athlete, you have tutors [to help you succeed academically] and so I had a moment when I realised that the education system isn’t working.”

    The statistics back up her hypothesis. In the US, approximately 86% of kids graduate from high school, but only about 37% of them graduate from college. Only 66% of US students reach Level 2 proficiency in mathematics and fewer than 30% of high school students feel prepared to pursue a postsecondary pathway.

    “It was like, this isn’t a problem that’s black or white, it’s not male or female, it’s not rich or poor. This is a problem that impacts everybody,” says Shead.

    “There’s a problem with the current system, the way schooling and college prepares you for each next step, even when it’s the best of the best – so what’s the solution?”

    Building on a three-year stint as an Apple mentor and volunteering in inner city schools in Dallas and Fort Worth, Shead took the leap and founded Stemuli in 2016 as a platform to support kids in STEM subjects.

    Shortly after, the pandemic hit and the world pivoted to online learning. The moment catapulted the business forward and Shead became only the 94th black woman in the history of the world to raise over a million dollars in venture capital.

    The company raised over USD$10 million overall and won the prestigious United Nations AI for good competition in 2024.

    The Stemuli mission is to gamify the curriculum to engage a generation of learners who have grown up on video games. This isn’t online learning for the sake of it; the aim is to create learning opportunities in the co-creative worlds that exist in games.

    “There are 3.3 billion gamers around the world playing right now,” Shead explains. “Yet all the kids I meet in classrooms are bored. Games like Roblox and Minecraft have set the example of STEM learning crossing over to where kids want to be.”

    Stemuli is currently beta testing the third iteration of the platform, a one-world gaming environment where there are infinite possibilities to explore and learn.

    Only 66% of US students reach Level 2 proficiency in math and fewer than 30% of high school students feel prepared to pursue a postsecondary pathway

    “We used to produce a lot of work simulation games but now nobody knows what the future jobs are going to be. Technology is moving so fast,” explains Shead.

    “So we’ve created a much more entrepreneurial gaming experience where, together with an AI prompt assistant, you can test and learn all sorts of ideas in a safe environment. We’ve created a game for entrepreneurship.”

    Shead is keen to stress that there is a misconception that entrepreneurship means that you must aspire to be the boss of your own company. She equates entrepreneurship to a curiosity skillset that builds problem solving and resilience in a fast-changing world.

    “We are a Walton family funded organisation and they partnered with us at Stemuli to scale stimuli across 20 states in the heartland in order to make sure people in rural America have access to AI literacy skills through our video game,” she says.

    “I am obsessed about the idea of a little boy or girl sitting in a rural, remote town that’s seeing with their own eyes the problems that need to be solved in their community. They’re going to create the best technology because they understand the problem, whereas somebody on the coast or Silicon Valley, they’re not even thinking about it.”

    It is also is significant that Shead has achieved so much success in the edtech field, despite coming largely from an athletic background rather than a tech education.

    “Most people think athletes are dumb, but maybe we’re stubborn and hardworking and relentless enough to be the ones that actually can endure the pressure to make something like this happen, right?

    “I like to flip the narrative on its head to say it might take an athlete to go up against established systems and to believe that, in a world that is so structured, that education can actually change for the better. They don’t call athletes game-changers for nothing.”

    There will be many people who feel the status quo in education should be preserved, but the great promise of technology is the potential for companies like Stemuli to open access up for the majority rather than the privileged few.

    “It’s going to be hard, but there are people like me out there who feel inspired by this mission and that means it’s the best time to be alive” says Shead.

    Having seen Shead in action at The PIE Live Asia Pacific, we are inclined to believe her.

    Talor Shead was interviewed by The PIE’s Nicholas Cuthbert and took part in our conference debate – Will AI improve or damage higher education? at The PIE Live Asia Pacific. Watch Taylor explain why it’s the best time to be alive below.

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