Mike Cladingbowl
Member

Mike Cladingbowl started teaching in 1987 after completing a research degree at Liverpool University. He taught in the North West and was a successful secondary head teacher in Crewe until he was appointed one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMI) in 2002 working as a member of the school improvement division across the country.

In 2005, he was appointed a Senior HMI and led nationally on the inspection of local authority children’s services working with local and central government, senior politicians, and the other public service inspection bodies. He has been accountable for around 10,000 inspections annually, a budget of around £45 million, a call centre, national quality assurance processes, a large dispersed inspector field-force, and approximately 400 office-based employees.

From 2012 he led Ofsted’s work on school inspection, introducing the ‘requires improvement’ grade and accompanying changes to inspection, the introduction of eight new Ofsted regions and associated infrastructure changes, and most recently led the development of new inspection of schools, colleges, independent schools, and early years. He has extensive leadership and management experience and has worked closely with the most senior figures in education.

As a key member of the executive board at Ofsted he worked with five Chief Inspectors, and his posts included National Director, Inspection Reform and National Director, Schools. He returned to school leadership in January 2015 and is currently the Executive Principal of Knutsford Multi-Academy Trust. He is Interim Chair of the Board of Directors of a new rural Multi-Academy Trust in Shropshire.