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Exceptional Education at the Heart of the Community

Exceptional Education at the Heart of the Community

Regional Leadership

The Oasis Community Learning (OCL) family of academies are split into five regions of England – London and the South East, the South Coast, the Midlands, the South West and the North.

Each Academy ensures local governance through a Hub Council, whilst national governance is delivered through the OCL National Office, and Regional Directors (RDs).

Each region is supported by at least one RD who is accountable to the CEO of OCL, and accountable for the Principals of academies in their region.

The job of a Regional Director is to:

  • Oversee regional delivery of education, including standards and leadership as well as performance outcomes
  • Ensure professional governance across all Academies in their region
  • Monitor Academy budgets and escalations
  • Monitor and escalate high risk HR cases, IT services issues, property and estates, new business and capital project issues
  • Monitor, audit and intervene on safeguarding issues and health and safety issues

The Regional Director for academies within the North East region is Emma Merva. 

Emma is a highly experienced national and international educational professional. She has worked across the world in both an advisory and inspection capacity with governments and educational providers across the Middle East region. 

More locally she was the founding Executive Principal, and set up two outstanding free schools in the North West, for Star Academies. She has been a inclusion lead for over 20 years and more recently was the SENDCO for these two brand new free schools for over 2 years. 

Emma has sat on several strategic boards across the North West region, having been in senior strategic roles since 2003. She facilitates and coaches on the National Professional Qualification for Headship and on an executive MBA programme in addition to her day-to-day work. 

She holds endorsements to inspect across the world and has several post graduate degrees. Including the NASEN award, a post graduate certificate in SEND, post graduate degree in Early Childhood Studies, post graduate degree in HR, she is a fellow of the Charted College of teaching and the RSA and she has Masters degree with a focus on SEND. 

To read more about the governance structure, please click here.