Senior Leadership Team

I am overjoyed to be writing to you as the Headteacher of City Academy Whitehawk. I adore the school and its vibrant community and couldn’t be more proud to be here.

I remember writing in 2017 that it was a privilege to have been welcomed to the Whitehawk community as your Deputy Headteacher. I was thrilled to support Mr. Church and the team in my role, adopting the responsibilities for Teaching and Learning, Curriculum, Assessment and Behaviour; I am enormously proud of our achievements in these areas over the past five years. As your Headteacher, having navigated the community through the pandemic as safely and successfully, we entered the school’s next phase of development and continue to go from strength to strength. It is my responsibility to ensure that we are the very best school that we can possibly be and I look forward to achieving this, working alongside you, the children and my colleagues within school and across Aurora Academies Trust.

It remains my ambition for CAW to become a hub for exceptional teaching and learning. We’re incredibly proud of the quality of education we provide, day in day out, and we mentor and coach staff especially well to ensure that they are well supported to deliver the best possible learning opportunities. Our academic outcomes in recent years would suggest that we're well on our way to exceeding this goal.

We’ve enjoyed developing the school’s curriculum over the past five years and our newly appointed Assistant Headteachers will be working closely with our curriculum leaders and teaching staff so that everything is in place for our children to make as much progress as possible, achieving personal excellence.

Outside of school I love playing (and watching!) sport, riding my bike, listening to music, walking my dog and reading novels but most of all, sharing stories with my wonderful children.

I am so proud to serve the Whitehawk community, and feel very lucky to work with the wonderful City Academy Whitehawk children every day. I am always so impressed by how creative and hard working our students are. It is a real privilege to be part of such a fantastic, caring school, and to help support our inspirational teaching staff.

I lead on Behaviour and Attitudes. If any families have questions or concerns around behaviour, please do get in touch with me via the School Office, or come and say hello on the school gates before or after school. I also lead on our Personal Development offer, ensuring all children in the school achieve personal excellence and are ready for the next phase of their education.

I have been a teacher for twenty years in Oxford, Reading, Brighton and Japan. As well as teaching, I love reading! My current favourite children's book is The Last Bear by Hannah Gold. I also enjoy building Lego and hanging out with my own children, and going running with our chocolate labrador Blossom!

Update coming soon.

Hello! I am delighted to be starting as Assistant Headteacher for Inclusion at CAW. I have recently moved to Brighton & Hove, and I am already feeling very welcomed! Prior to this role, I have led and co-ordinated provision for children with special educational needs at another primary school and taught in both special and mainstream schools.

Inclusion has long been a passion of mine. We all think, learn and feel differently. I will aim to work closely with children, parents and staff to identify, understand and remove barriers to learning so that personal success can be achieved by all. It is a privilege to advocate for children and families, and I am very much looking forward to getting to know the CAW community.

Outside of school, I’m a big fan of reading, watching live music and the sea! 

I've been working at the school as the Business Manager since 2009.  My job is to look after the school's finances, staff and buildings and I have seen many changes to the school in my time here.  We are always looking at ways in which we can improve our school to make it a fun and exciting place for children to come and learn.

I consider myself very lucky to work is such a vibrant space with a great staff team and fantastic children.  Many visitors comment on the warm welcome that they receive at the school and the great atmosphere that we have here.  I'm very proud to say that I work at City Academy Whitehawk and enjoy seeing all the wonderful things that our children achieve.

I started at City Academy Whitehawk in 2016 after moving from Canada. Before arriving at CAW, I worked in a variety of schools in both in England (supply teaching throughout Brighton) and Canada (mostly Secondary). When the opportunity to work at CAW came up, I jumped at it! Since then, I have worked in Year 5 and 6, led on History, Geography and Maths and I absolutely love it.

I was really excited in 2020 when an opportunity to become an Assistant Headteacher came up, this role allows me to still be in class while being able to make decisions that influence the whole school. This is a really exceptional school with exceptional children!

I started working at CAW in September 2017 as a Year 2 class teacher and fell in love with the school, staff, children and families immediately. In 2020, I was appointed to Assistant Headteacher. In this same year, I moved to teach in Year 5 and got to teach lots of my Year 2 classes as Year 5s which I loved.

Over the years, I've taken on various subject and school roles but my favourite one is one of the ones I hold now; Reading leader! I am incredibly passionate about the power and joy of reading for pleasure and work across the whole school to lead reading as a curriculum subject and as a pastime.

I'm always keen to speak about reading in all its forms so please get in touch if I can answer any questions. My favourite book I read in 2021-2022 was When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohammed which is a graphic novel that beautifully tells the story of a pair of Kenyan refugee brothers and their quest for asylum. In 2022-2023, my favourite was The Lion Above The Door by Onjali Q Rauf. The audio book trilogy of Northen Lights was also a stand out! I'd recommend all of these to children and adults alike.

I'm eternally grateful for the support I get from all my colleagues, especially my year group team, Thomas and the leadership team. CAW is a special place to work and I look forward to what the future holds (and how many more books I can conceivably fit in our school library!)