At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based CEO’ operating in the Secondary Education space. If you think a CEO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Raza Khan
Chief Executive Officer of Al Najah Education
Raza joined Working Links in February 2016 and is responsible for winning business across our employability and justice markets. Raza comes to us with 12 years’ experience of delivering profitable, multi-million pound business growth in the education and skills, outsourcing and government services sectors. Raza has worked internationally and across the UK in the education, skills and public service sectors, including leading high-growth and turnaround situations in many large companies. He has been CEO of a public service mutual delivering outstanding outcomes for children; Executive Director of one of the UK’s leading skills and employability companies; Managing Director of the Middle East’s fastest growing schools company; and has held executive roles in various highly successful private equity-backed education, outsourcing and services companies. Raza is a graduate of Warwick Business School, and spent several years in postgraduate research before starting his business career.
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About Al Najah Education: Al Najah Education provides top quality education.
Ben Dunford
Founder & CEO of EPraise
Ben Dunford, 29, from Exeter, Devon has been a teacher since 2007. Prior to becoming a teacher, he studied for a BSc in Computer Science at the University of Exeter and a PGCE with South West Teacher Training. Ben came up with the idea for epraise in 2009 after noticing that his school’s reward system was not having much of a positive effect on the students, and was wasting a lot of administration time. In 2010 epraise launched in three local schools, and in 2012 epraise attended their first BETT show, which was a huge success. In 2013 Ben won the Express and Echo Young Entrepreneur of the Year award and began to cut back on teaching to focus more on epraise. Ben has continued to add new functionality and refinements to epraise almost every week. epraise has now developed way beyond just a rewards system and now incorporates many behaviour, learning, assessment and tracking tools which teachers use on a daily basis. The popularity of epraise has seen it grown beyond the UK into markets such as the USA and UAE. It’s still early days for epraise, but it’s certainly going very well indeed – in 2014 epraise more than doubled their takings.
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About EPraise: Praise and rewards system for schools
James Bryce
Founder and CEO of gweek
Entrepreneur in speech pathology and technology.
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About gweek: gweek is the category leader of Speech Intelligence. We help job candidates speak and communicate with natural agility.
Joachim Horn
Founder & CEO of SAM Labs
Joachim Horn is a Founder at Sam Labs.
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About SAM Labs: SAM Labs is an edtech company that empowers teachers with the most engaging STEAM solution.
Dr Liz Durden-Myers
CEO / Managing Director of PE Scholar
Education Consultant, Physical Educator and International Speaker. Co-Founder & Managing Director at Scholary Ltd and PE Scholar Ltd. Senior Lecturer in Physical Education at Bath Spa University, UK and University of Gloucestershire, UK. Chair of the International Physical Literacy Association (IPLA).
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About PE Scholar: PE Scholar is an international publisher of high quality physical education resources, curated research, and sector-wide insight.
Ben Caulfield
CEO and Co-Founder of Eedi
Ben Caulfield is the CEO and Co-Founder of Eedi.
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About Eedi: Eedi develops digital and physical products that ensure that every learner has access to great teaching and learning.
