Dave Hewitt

Dave's career started as a Geography teacher in Rochdale in 1997. He quickly moved into a pastoral role as Head of Year which he stayed in for 6 years. In 2003 he joined a school in Oldham as Head of Geography which also had a large sixth form. Dave enjoyed leading the Geography Department and designing the curriculum. He was asked to oversee the Humanities department after 2 years of being in post which he did successfully.

Dave took his first step into leadership in 2006 where he was appointed as Assistant Headteacher at a Tameside secondary school; his focus and leadership area was to manage the school’s specialism of sport. Within the first term the leadership team were informed that school would be closing and merging with a neighbouring school by 2010. Dave continued his work as an Assistant Headteacher but was also asked to be part of the design team for the brand new £28 million pound build under the BSF program. His role was to provide advice under the remit of ‘educational consultant’ supporting the design of the new build. Dave's role developed and he became strategically involved in bringing the two neighbouring schools, community and staff together. Working alongside Manchester City Football club they devised a 2 year transitional program ensuring all the students were fully ‘ready and prepared’ to join the new school which was named as Denton Community College. Dave's connection with the football club continued as he worked with their charitable trust ‘City in the Community’ to develop educational material to run alongside the school curriculum.

The schools merged in 2010 and he secured a new role of Deputy Headteacher in the competitive restructure program. The first strategic task he had was to plan and develop a new behaviour system and policy for the new school. He completed this task successfully and then began to focus on teaching and learning including whole school curriculum design. Dave stayed at Denton Community College for six years but realised he wanted to develop his understanding of how MAT’s work and supported each other. He moved over to Yorkshire and took the role as Vice Principal of his current academy, Manor Croft Academy in Earlsheaton.

After eighteen months Dave was made Principal of Manor Croft Academy, the role he is currently enjoying now. In the last two years as Principal he has been involved in supporting other academies within the trust to implement new systems and practices and also supporting the training and development of other MATs who Delta are currently supporting.

As Principal of Manor Croft, Dave has taken the academy from being in the bottom 2% of outcomes nationally to consistently in the top 5% whilst increasing the PAN and popularity of the academy and now being fully oversubscribed and the choice school within the area. Dave says that although it is highly accountable and challenging to work in this Trust, the support from other Principals always allows you to drive improvement forwards.