Executive Team
Loic Menzies
Chief Research Officer
Loic is a Visiting Fellow at Sheffield Institute of Education and a Senior Research Associate in the Jesus College IF, Cambridge University. His current research focuses on the policy making process. He has previously published on the teaching workforce, educational marginalisation, and assessment and accountability.
Patrick Wall
Chair of Trustees
Patrick is the CEO of Ark Academies, after having been a school governor in Birmingham and London for thirty years, including 14 as chair at Ark Academy, Wembley. An ex-Sutton Trust Fellow, he started Target Schools, the first access programme at Oxford University.
Patrick has wide-ranging business experience, the last 25 years as a tech Founder and CEO.
Jonathan Dando-Laing
incoming Chief Executive
Jonathan was one of the founding team who set up Oak National Academy in 2020, and was central to its growth into one of the most widely used education resources in England. Before that he worked at Teach First, The Prince’s Trust and VSO, and he is a trustee of Ormiston Academies Trust.
He starts with CES in February 2027.
Lucy Crehan
International Director
Lucy is an international education consultant, specialising in policy learning. She is the author of 'Cleverlands' which documented her exploration of five high-performing education systems. She is an Associate Advisor on Curriculum at Swansea University and teaches a Masters module on comparative education at the University of Buckingham.
Sam Freedman
Strategy Director
Sam is a senior fellow at the Institute for Government. He writes regularly on politics and policy for numerous outlets. Previously he was an executive director at Teach First and worked at the Department for Education as a senior policy adviser. Sam is also a senior adviser to the education charity Ark; Vice-Chair of Ambition Institute; and a trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust.
Lisa Bowett
Operations & Research
Lisa Bowett is a CES researcher, operations manager and the charity secretary. She holds a BA in Peace Studies and an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies. She was a co-author on CES' interim comparative review of assessment systems.
Advisory Board
Professor Anna Vignoles CBE FBA.
Anna is a British educationalist and economist. She is the Director of the Leverhulme Trust, taking up her position in January 2021. Previously, she was Professor of Education and fellow of Jesus College at the University of Cambridge, where her research focused on the economic value of education and issues of equity in education. She was elected as a fellow of the British Academy in 2017.
Professor Sir Steve Munby CBE.
Between 2005 and 2012, Steve was Chief Executive of the National College for School Leadership in England. From 2012 to 2017, he was Chief Executive of the Education Development Trust. Steven is Visiting Professor at the Institute for Education at University College London and is Chair of the Teaching Awards Trust in the UK. Steve is a consultant and speaker on leadership and system reform in education.
Professor Dylan ap Rhys Wiliam.
Dylan is a Welsh educationalist. His research focus is the professional development of teachers. He is most well known for Embedding formative assessment and "Inside the Black Box". Dylan is emeritus professor of educational assessment at the UCL Institute of Education. He lives in Bradford County, Florida, United States.
Natalie Perera
Chief External Affairs and Communications Officer at the exam board, AQA.
Before joining AQA, Natalie was Chief Executive of the Education Policy Institute, the research charity she co‑founded in 2015. She previously spent over a decade as a civil servant in the Department for Education, leading work across early years, children’s services, school funding and the Pupil Premium. Natalie also worked in the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office during the Coalition government, advising on education and wider public policy including health and welfare reform. She is a Trustee of two multi‑academy trusts and a Director of the Queen’s Street Group.
Researchers
Taylor Hughson
Senior Research Associate
Taylor is a Lecturer in Education at Victoria University of Wellington in Aotearoa New Zealand. He recently completed his doctorate at the University of Cambridge. His main research interests are curriculum, assessment, and education policy processes.
Yue-Yi Hwa
Senior Research Associate
and PI
Yue-Yi Hwa is the senior synthesis manager at the What Works Hub for Global Education at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. Her research is on improving implementation and children’s learning in education systems, with particular interests in the teaching profession and cross-disciplinary synthesis.
Dev Tiwari
Research Associate
Prior to this, Dev was an Assistant Principal in Australia where he was responsible for leading teacher professional development, the implementation of a Multi-tiered System of Supports for literacy, and the creation of the English and Humanities curriculum maps. His main research interests are in school improvement and leadership, teacher policy and education funding.
Catherine Wang
Research Assistant
Catherine Wang is a Research Assistant at the Centre for Education Systems, currently working on its comparative review of summative assessment Catherine has written for the CES blog and, with Loic Menzies, for Schools Week. Catherine is reading for an MSc in Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford on a Routledge Scholarship, having graduated with a first in Education Studies from the UCL Institute of Education.
Consultants
Dr Rania Marandos
Advisor
Rania is an independent consultant and executive coach, partnering with non-profit organisations to tackle inequity and create lasting change. She was previously Chief Executive of Step Up To Serve (coordinating the national #iwill campaign) and Head of Strategy at Teach First, having started her career in the public sector and McKinsey & Company. Rania is a Trustee of United Learning and Chair of United Communities.
EPI Partnership
EPI
The Education Policy Institute is an independent, impartial and evidence-based research institute that aims to promote high quality education outcomes for all children and young people, regardless of social background.
Partners
CES partnerships grow as additional policy areas are reviewed. Critical to success are, domain knowledge vis-a-vis the policy instruments in question (e.g. curriculum, accountability, assessment etc), research and analytical expertise across a range of methodologies and system capabilities e.g. EPPI-Reviewer. CES anticipates there will be an increasing use of AI driven exploration of data sources and descriptive information, together with technically enabled collaboration and co-creation.
For the two Nuffield reviews, the Curriculum team leads and co-investigators are Jane Mann, Tim Oates and Dr. Daniel Morrish from Cambridge University Press & Assessment. For Accountability, team leads and co-investigators are Dr Alison O’Mara-Eves and Dr. Antonia Simon (EPPI); Professor Melanie Ehren (Vrije Amsterdam); Professor Simon Burgess (University of Bristol). Ruth Maisey is the Nuffield Programme Head and Josh Hillman the Director of Education at Nuffield.
CES Partners
(for current and recent work)
