Paul Day - Member

Paul’s career, apart from times with Christian charities, has been in the maintenance and construction of buildings, gaining extensive experience in managing employees, contractors, consultants and liaising with Statutory Authorities.

Paul was Supervisor of a Service Depot with Eastern Gas and a Technical Engineer managing district heating systems with the Greater London Council. Whist at the GLC, Paul developed a training department, teaching gas fitting to the Council’s plumbers. This involved converting an Area Office into a Training Centre, fitting it out, writing the course work and lecturing.

Then, as Maintenance Manager for Estuary Housing Association, supervising its housing stock of several thousand properties for twenty years. Paul left to take up a residential post, together with his wife, at Pilgrims Hall, Brentwood, a Christian Charity. During this time, Paul and his wife became involved in mission work in East Africa; primarily Kenya, something that they continue to be involved with to the present day.

After that, Paul formed his own company, providing Consultancy & Maintenance Services for businesses and private individuals. During this period, he took on the part-time role of Manager for Frontline, a charity supporting people with disabilities based in Sawyers Church, Brentwood.

Paul was approached by St. Martin’s School to take on a temporary part-time role supporting its Finance/Maintenance Officer. When the Finance/Maintenance Officer left, the school retained Paul’s consultancy services to manage its maintenance and buildings’ development. Paul was offered the post of Maintenance Manager and remained with the school until retirement, during which time it converted to an academy and Paul’s post became Estate Manager, as it grew into a multi-school academy trust.

Paul has had several periods serving as a school governor, first as a Parent Governor in a Primary school in Shoeburyness, then as Foundation Governor at Southend High School for Boys.

Matt Fossey - Member

Matt Fossey is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Anglia Ruskin University Veterans and Families Institute for Military Social Research (VFI). The VFI hosts the Veterans and Families Research Hub and the Forces in Mind Trust Research Centre. The VFI staff are currently researching diverse areas relating to the impact of transition on UK veterans. This work includes studies on traumatic amputation, employment, criminal justice interventions and early service separation, as well as issues relating to wellbeing and equalities.

Matt originally trained as a mental health social worker and spent a number of years working in front line services. He worked in both local government and for the UK National Health Service. In 2002, he moved from practice to strategic delivery and policy and eventually spent five years at the Department of Health as the Deputy Director of a £0.5 billion programme to improve access to psychological therapies (IAPT).

After leaving the DoH, Matt worked for a number of NGOs and Think Tanks developing work on diverse topics including: mental health stigma, liaison and consultation psychiatry, borderline personality disorder and female offenders and veterans health and wellbeing.

Matt is a member of the NATO research groups considering military to civilian transition and is co-chair of the NATO group researching sexual harassment in the military. He is a member of a number of national and government level boards focusing on the challenges faced by service personnel, veterans and their families.

In 2014 Matt was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a member of the Society for Evidence-based Policing and is a Senior Associate at Centre for Mental Health. He has previously had honorary teaching appointments at the universities of Sussex and Nottingham. Matt has held a number of national and regional charity board level positions. Matt is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Educators, one of the “modern” London livery companies.

Geoff Morgan - Member

Geoff Morgan worked for four international organisations. He started his career as a graduate trainee with Ford Motor Co before moving to the City of London to join JP Morgan, the US investment bank, as Vice President, Personnel. He transferred to Lloyds Merchant Bank to join the board as Director of Personnel and Support Services. His final appointment was as Director, Human Resources and Property Services for Lloyd’s of London.

He holds a dual honours degree in Psychology and Sociology from Sheffield University. He is a former member of the Insurance Industry Training Council and a founder member of the London Human Resources Group, which published several reports on employment in the City. He is a freeman of the City of London.

Geoff was a governor of St Martin’s School for many years and also chaired the board. Later he was appointed a governor of Havering College of Further and Higher education. He is a former Chair of the board of trustees of Brentwood Citizens Advice Bureau and was also a trustee of the employment charity ‘Tomorrow’s People’ and chaired the Nominations and Remuneration Committee.  

Now retired, he is married to Liz and they have 2 grown up children (both educated at St Martin’s) and 5 grandchildren, He is an enthusiastic golfer and member of several community/social groups.

Anita Pratten - Member

After gaining a degree in Economics and International Relations at the University of St Andrews, Anita started her career with KPMG in London where she qualified as a Chartered Accountant.  After a career break to bring up her family, she joined the Education Finance Support team at Essex County Council. Her role was to assess financial management and governance capacity within schools under the government’s Financial Management Standard in Schools framework.

Following this position Anita worked as School Business Manager for five years for a large primary school, which converted to become an academy during her time there.  Subsequently she moved to work for the Chelmsford Education Network as Network Finance Manager, providing finance support to schools and academies, in particular with setting budgets, longer term forecasting and meeting the reporting requirements of the Local Authority and the Department for Education.  The Chelmsford Education Network closed in April 2020 and Anita has continued to work with the member schools on a consultancy basis.

Anita was a parent governor of St Martin’s School for many years, chairing two committees and serving as Vice Chair of Governors. She was a founding member of the Brentwood Academies Trust and a Director of that Trust from 2011 until 2019.

Dave Smith - Member

Dave is a Local Authority senior inspector, providing school improvement support for schools in London and beyond, as well as leading on Traded Services for the Havering Education Services School Improvement team. He has spent the past 18 years specialising in computing, education technology and online safety support for schools and is a CEOP Online Safety Ambassador. Dave is part of the Havering team that has worked with Rising Stars to develop the Bett Award winning ‘ Switched on Computing’ series (in over 6500 schools in the UK and internationally). He recently worked on the education technology aspect of the UK Government’s Department for Education’s Workload Reduction Toolkit. He is the former Chair of the Board of Management of Naace – the UK’s Education Technology Association. He is also a judge for the Bett Awards and Education Resources Awards. Dave enjoys exploring education technology internationally – addressing Japan’s New Education Expo conference on two occasions, participating in the USA’s ISTE conference, as well as providing education technology consultancy in the Middle East and Europe. He was previously a teacher/senior leader in three schools, governor of four schools and Assistant Marketing Director/Senior Tutor at Anglia Ruskin University’s mPowerNet ICT Training for Teachers.