About Us
CDAT is a successful and growing multi-academy trust stretching across the Diocese of Chester – with schools across Cheshire, Tameside, Stockport, Warrington, Halton and the Wirral. Our schools provide a really wide variety of training opportunities – with a mix of large and small schools covering both urban and village/rural locations.
Our trainees almost always spend their time in schools that are already part of the CDAT school family, but we do also work with other partnership schools across our area.
During your training year, you’ll get to know lots of the CDAT team really well. Key people working on our ITT programmes are:
Leanne Shaw
Leanne leads our ITT programmes, and is also one of our school advisors. She previously worked extensively in Warrington both as a senior leader in a large and very successful primary school and latterly as an advisor, specialising in teaching, learning and curriculum development.
Emma Furlong
Emma provides admin support for all aspects of our ITT provision – right from organising interviews to being first point of contact for trainees throughout the course.
Kerry McLean
Kerry is CDAT’s Director of Education, and she oversees school improvement across the trust. Kerry has worked as a Headteacher and Executive Headteacher within CDAT since 2018. Her main areas of focus are leadership and management, assessment and curriculum. She has a particular passion for Early Years and Phonics and has experience of leading small schools and working within other multi-academy trusts.
Neil Dixon
Neil is CDAT’s Chief Executive (CEO). He joined the trust as CEO in May 2019, having spent the previous three years working for Ofsted as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMI). Prior to that, Neil spent 13 years as headteacher of a Church of England primary school in Liverpool diocese. Neil has a real passion for teacher training, and was one of the team that first set up Mersey Boroughs.
ITT – our SCITT partner
We are delighted to work with two fabulous organisations as partners in our ITT provision. Mersey Boroughs ITT Partnership are CDAT’s partner provider and the awarding body for QTS at the end of the programme. Mersey Boroughs is a well-established and respected School Centred provider of Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) rated as ‘good’ by Ofsted. The PGCE element of the course (led by a great team at Anglia Ruskin University) is delivered via regular online sessions across the autumn and spring terms.
