John began his career teaching English, History and RE in a large secondary school. However, he always felt he was better suited to primary teaching and transferred to the primary sector as a class teacher in a Canterbury CE Primary school where he was in charge of PE and Games. From there he moved to a large CE Junior school in Faversham as a department head, responsible for science. His first headship was of a tiny village school, nestling high in the North Downs, to the south of Faversham. It was a real 'Miss Read' existence and John lived with his family in the school house. During his time there the roll doubled (to 33!!) and the school won a curriculum innovation award for its work in rural science. Three years later he took on the headship of a four-class CE Junior school, occupying the top two floors of a Victorian 'three-decker' school, which had a separate infant school (and the junior's swimming pool!) on the ground floor. Located in a socially deprived area of Rochester, the school had a significant proportion of pupils with English as an additional language and a variety of faiths

After four years John took on the headship of a 3FE CE Junior School in Rainham, Kent (soon to become part of the Borough of Medway). During his years here, the school gained in popularity and increased to 4FE. It later became a Training School, the lead school in a cross-phase 4-18 training partnership that would now be called a SCITT. Having a reliable senior team, John was asked to take on the temporary headship of a community primary school in the north of the borough in order to provide strategic leadership during a time of crisis and to prepare the school for its next Ofsted inspection. After his return to Rainham he applied for, and was appointed to the headship of a large, 3FE primary school in Thanet. This school, located in an area of extreme social deprivation and high Eastern European inward migration, was in Special Measures and John was privileged to work with an excellent team to lead it through two successful Ofsted inspections.

 

Adept Education was formed in 2008, when John decided that 28 years of headship was enough. He had inspected for Ofsted since 1997 and the very first Framework and was also a tutor for eQualitas teacher training services so there was initially a body of work to expand on. In addition, Optimus-education invited him to write a book on faith schools  'Leading a Faith School' (Optimus 2009).  Since then he has published works on self-evaluation, lesson planning, SMSC and the national curriculum. He was also a contributing writer for several education journals. He inspected Anglican and Methodist Schools (SIAMS) for over 20 years and 120 inspections. he is sometimes asked for his view as an experienced Ofsted inspector (70 inspections secondary, primary and special with 20 EYFS inspections.  He is Chair of Governors of a local primary school and member of a special school Trust.

 

Networking with colleagues, similarly engaged in independent work, led to the formation of Adept Education Associates, a loose-federation of self-employed consultants. While John worked as a sole-trader, networking means that he can usually locate a colleague able to help, if he cannot.