February 2026 – Rob Mammen

Rob Mammen, CEO & Executive Principal at Chingford Academies Trust, London. Leading a multi-academy trust of two schools across the Chingford community.

From Head of Maths to CEO who still teaches A-level: Rob Mammen’s journey proves that strategic leadership doesn’t mean losing touch with classrooms

Rob Mammen is building a new school building at Chingford Foundation School. It’s not about increasing capacity. It’s about upgrading facilities for the students who are already there. That distinction tells you something important about how he leads: decisions are driven by what benefits students, not by growth for its own sake.

As CEO of Chingford Academies Trust, Rob oversees two schools across Chingford. But walk into his office and you’ll find a model of the school grounds with a copper section marking where the new building will stand. If you check his timetable, you’ll find him teaching A-level Maths and Further Maths. Strategic leadership, he’s learned, doesn’t require distance from the work itself.

Rob’s tips:

• Do things for the right reasons
• Do things that benefit the students
• Never think you are above anyone
• Remain connected to classroom practice even as CEO

From Teacher to Trust Leader: “Not On My Watch”

Rob’s career began in 2004 as a teacher and Deputy Head of Maths at Southgate School in Enfield. By 2009, he’d moved to Chingford Foundation School as Head of Maths, progressing through Head of Faculty to Assistant Principal by 2012 – the same year the school became the founding member of Chingford Academies Trust.

His trajectory was methodical: Maths Teacher to Head of Faculty to Assistant Principal to Deputy Head to Head of School. In 2016, he left for Roding Valley High School in Loughton, taking up a Deputy Headteacher role and later becoming Senior Deputy Headteacher. After a brief period as Acting Head of School, he had options about where to go next.

Then he saw the job advertised for CEO at Chingford Academies Trust. When he’d left as a senior leader, Chingford Foundation School had been inspected by Ofsted and was rated Good with an Outstanding Sixth Form. In 2019, it received Requires Improvement.

“I felt ‘not on my watch’,” Rob explains. “I have unfinished business and we need to get it back to where it belongs.”

He returned in January 2023 as CEO and Executive Principal. It wasn’t about promotion. It was about responsibility.

Rob’s tips:

• Gain experience across different schools and contexts
• Don’t be afraid to leave and return with new perspective
• Build expertise in different leadership roles before taking on CEO responsibility
• Return when you have unfinished business that matters

CAT 3-90s: The Trust’s “True North”

Rob didn’t return just to restore an Ofsted rating. He returned to build something more ambitious: a system where achievement knows no bounds. The vehicle for that ambition is what he calls CAT 3-90s – a framework of interconnected 90% targets that define success across the trust.

CAT 3-90s stands for targets across three critical areas, all aiming for 90%:

• 90% of incoming Year 7 students on trajectory to achieve 4+ in English and Maths by Year 11
• 90% of students achieving reading age equivalent to their chronological age
• 90% of those joining sixth form leaving with positive value added

“I wanted to create a structure where achievement knows no bounds,” Rob explains. “That level of ambition requires the resources and collaboration of a Trust. A single school might struggle to sustain these targets alone.”

Rob’s tips:

• Set public, ambitious targets even if they frighten people initially
• Use clear numerical goals that everyone can understand
• Build trust-level support for targets a single school couldn’t sustain
• Make your targets interconnected so success in one area supports another

The risk is obvious: you might miss them. But Rob believes the reward – a refreshed commitment to raising standards across the entire trust – outweighs the risk. These aren’t aspirational numbers. They’re deliberate, high-stakes strategies that require every part of the trust working in alignment.

“We are the Trustworthy Navigator that guides our schools to these hard targets without losing the human touch,” he says. The metaphor is deliberate. A navigator doesn’t control the ship, but provides direction and helps avoid obstacles.

Rob’s tips:

• Position yourself as navigator, not controller
• Provide clear direction whilst allowing schools autonomy
• Balance hard targets with maintaining the human element
• Be trustworthy – follow through on commitments

Balancing Identity with Standards

The challenge with trust-level targets is that they can flatten school identity. Rob is acutely aware of this risk.

“What is not worth risking is the individual identity of our schools,” he insists. “We must navigate opportunities for growth without turning our schools into clones.”

This is the trust’s key differentiator. Many MATs struggle to keep individual school identities alive while raising standards. Rob’s approach is to align all schools to the same “True North” – those 90% targets – whilst allowing them to operate with their own individual identity and ethos.

The trust balances what Rob describes as “a friendly, community-focused ethos with unapologetically high standards.” That’s the tension he’s managing: schools feel human, approachable, embedded in their communities, whilst simultaneously driving toward ambitious targets.

Rob’s tips:

• Allow schools their own ethos within shared targets
• Don’t impose identical methods across different contexts
• Balance friendly community ethos with high standards
• Navigate growth without creating clones

Strategic Thinking and MAT Leadership

Rob plans months, sometimes years ahead. It’s not about control – it’s about creating conditions where schools can improve sustainably rather than lurching from crisis to crisis.

That strategic thinking extends to expansion. Rob wants to grow Chingford Academies Trust, but expansion isn’t about empire-building. It’s about extending what works to schools that could benefit from the trust’s approach.

Rob’s tips:

• Plan months or years ahead, not just term to term
• Grow for the right reasons, not scale
• Make growth decisions based on benefit to students

He’s deliberately created a diverse executive team because better decisions emerge when the people making them don’t all think the same way.

Ask Rob what he underestimated about MAT leadership, and he’s direct: “The constant changing of your area of focus – one minute finance, the next HR, the next PR.”

It’s the context-switching that surprises new MAT leaders. You’re deep in budget planning, then there’s a safeguarding issue, then you’re managing press relations, then back to curriculum strategy.

“The key is to have a good team around you and to work in collaboration,” Rob says. He doesn’t try to do everything alone. He accepts advice. He recognises that running a trust effectively requires distributing expertise, not concentrating it.

Rob’s tips:

• Create diverse executive teams
• Value what different perspectives bring
• Collaborate with others
• Accept advice from others
• Don’t do everything alone
• Employ experts in their field into key roles
• Have people you trust who can speak to you straight
• Ensure there is some humour in your team
• Work with people who align with your values
• Build a team that will challenge your decisions

STEMM, Not STEM

Rob values STEM subjects, but he’s keen to point out that at Chingford Academies Trust, it’s STEMM – and that extra M is deliberate. It stands for Medicine.

It’s not a gimmick. The trust has expertise within its teaching staff to present medicine as a viable pathway for students. In communities where students might not see medicine as accessible, that matters.

Rob’s tips:

• Use the expertise you have in your staff
• Make aspirational pathways visible and accessible to students
• Build curriculum around the strengths of your teaching team

The fact that Rob still teaches A-level Maths and Further Maths reinforces this. He’s not just talking about curriculum in abstract terms. He’s in classrooms, experiencing what his teachers experience.

Rob’s tips:

• Stay in the classroom even as CEO
• Teach at A-level to understand what students and staff face
• Model the expectations you have of others

AI as Accelerator Toward 90%

Rob’s perspective on AI is characteristically precise. He’s not interested in AI for its own sake. He’s interested in AI because it can accelerate progress toward the CAT 3-90s targets.

“The most successful MATs will have used AI not just for efficiency, but to hit critical value-added KPIs,” he explains. “In five years, successful MATs will be using AI-driven adaptive learning to close the literacy gap, ensuring we hit our target of 90% reading age equivalence faster than traditional methods allow.”

Rob’s tips:

• Use AI to hit specific targets, not for technology’s sake
• Deploy AI to close literacy gaps and accelerate reading age progress
• Focus on value-added outcomes, not just efficiency gains
• See technology as tool to unleash potential, not replace teaching

Rob is starting to implement AI into the trust thoughtfully. He’s beginning with teaching and support staff, using platforms like Sparx and other individualised learning frameworks. The approach is to build staff confidence and capability first, then extend to students with clear purpose: hitting those 90% targets.

He has strong IT support that can work across sites, which means implementation doesn’t depend on individual schools figuring it out alone. There’s central expertise that supports consistency whilst allowing for school-specific adaptation.

Rob is also encouraging staff to implement AI literacy for students – not just using AI tools, but understanding what AI is, how it works, and how to engage with it critically.

Rob’s tips:

• Start AI implementation with staff, not students
• Build staff confidence and capability first
• Use strong central IT support to enable consistency
• Implement AI literacy for students, not just AI tools
• Deploy AI specifically to close gaps and hit targets faster

Technology isn’t the strategy. Hitting 90% is the strategy. AI is the accelerator.

Building for Students, Not Capacity

The new building at Chingford Foundation School tells you something about Rob’s priorities. It’s not about growing student numbers. It’s about upgrading facilities for the students already in the school.

When you visit, that priority is visible. Staff, students and parents in the reception all spoke highly of Rob. That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when people feel valued, heard and supported.

Rob creates wellbeing days for staff. He recognises that staff capacity depends on staff wellbeing, and that sustainable improvement requires looking after the people doing the work.

Rob’s tips:

• Look after your staff
• Create wellbeing days for staff
• Build facilities that benefit current students, not future growth
• Be visible and accessible to staff, students and parents

Setting Healthy Boundaries

Rob has learned that effective leadership requires boundaries. He can say no when needed. He sleeps on decisions rather than feeling pressure to decide immediately.

But boundaries aren’t walls. He’s collaborative, accepts advice, and builds teams that challenge his thinking. The boundaries are about sustainability, not isolation.

Rob’s tips:

• Set healthy boundaries
• Learn when to say no
• Don’t feel pressure to decide everything immediately
• Make boundaries about sustainability, not isolation

The Results Are in the Details

Chingford Academies Trust operates two schools across Chingford, with plans to expand thoughtfully in the coming years. But the evidence of Rob’s leadership isn’t in organisational charts. It’s in the model of the new building on his desk – facilities being upgraded for current students, not expanded for growth. It’s in the fact that he’s still teaching A-level whilst running a trust. It’s in the wellbeing days created for staff. It’s in the diverse executive team he’s built. It’s in the AI implementation that begins with staff capacity and aims explicitly at closing literacy gaps to hit 90% reading age equivalence.

And it’s in that “not on my watch” moment when he saw Chingford Foundation School drop to Requires Improvement and knew he had to return. Not for career advancement. For responsibility.

Rob’s journey from Head of Maths to CEO suggests something important: the best trust leaders don’t lose sight of what schools are actually for. They plan strategically whilst staying connected to classrooms. They set ambitious public targets – CAT 3-90s – that create a “True North” everyone can navigate toward. They balance friendly, community-focused ethos with unapologetically high standards. They act as Trustworthy Navigators who guide schools to hard targets without losing the human touch.

They create diverse teams, accept advice, set boundaries, and remember that leadership means earning trust through consistent action – doing things for the right reasons, looking after staff, and never thinking you’re above anyone.

At Chingford Academies Trust in London, that approach is working. As the trust prepares to expand, Rob’s example matters: plan years ahead, but teach A-level maths. Build new facilities for current students, not future growth. Set 90% targets that frighten people, then support schools to hit them. Create diverse teams. Look after staff. Grow for the right reasons. Return when you have unfinished business. And never think you’re above anyone.

How This Relates to Meta Pedagogy and AI

Rob’s approach demonstrates what Meta Pedagogy advocates: using technology as an accelerator toward specific educational outcomes. Just as Rob deploys AI to close literacy gaps and hit the CAT 3-90s targets – 90% reading age equivalence, 90% positive value-added in sixth form – we support trusts to implement AI with clear strategic purpose rather than chasing the latest tools. His emphasis on starting with staff capacity, building central expertise that supports schools, and focusing on AI literacy mirrors our rejection of rushed, vendor-driven implementation. Technology isn’t the strategy. Hitting your targets is the strategy. AI is the accelerator. When you’re ready to implement AI with the same precision and purpose Rob brings to CAT 3-90s, we’re here to support that work.

Ready to implement AI strategically and sustainably?

Book a free 30-minute consultation to discuss what thoughtful, target-focused AI implementation could look like in your trust. No rushed rollouts, no vendor-driven timelines, just strategic support from people who understand that AI should accelerate progress toward your specific goals.