John Murphy

John is a highly experienced CEO who has grown and developed one of England’s leading academy trusts.

As CEO of Oasis Community Learning, he proudly led 52 primary and secondary academies serving some of the most disadvantaged communities, and a workforce of 5,000. During his tenure, he onboarded 41 schools, opened several free schools, and 45 schools within the trust moved from special measures/failing status to good and outstanding.

As CEO, John’s leadership was underpinned by a 36-year career in which he served as a headteacher across seven schools including primary, secondary, all through, and special, including residential SEMH. His passion for developing and enabling others has been the golden thread running through his work. He was also a leadership advisor in the Future Leaders programme and has expertise in behaviour management, having co-authored a best-selling self help guide for teachers "Why are you shouting at me?”.

As one of the founding CEOs of the National Institute of Teaching, John has contributed to the architecture of the school trust sector. The institute's mission is to nurture the talents of teachers and leaders by providing development and research to give children the world-class education that they deserve. John is also a trustee of E-ACT, and Place2BE, the country’s leading children’s mental health charity and is the independent chair of the Blackpool Investment Area Board.

John continues to use his skills and experience to support other leaders to succeed as a CST mentor and chair of national conferences that nurture the next generation of school trust CEOs.

As a mentor, John offers expertise in the following areas:

• Developing authentic leadership and growing a vision
• Developing personal leadership and succession planning
• School improvement at scale
• Developing strategy and leading growth
• Organisational design
• People strategy and development
• Building effective governance