Julian Drinkall appointed CEO of Academies Enterprise Trust
Julian Drinkall has been made the new chief executive of the Academies Enterprise Trust (AET), the country’s largest multi-academy trust.
The AET comprises 66 primary, special and secondary academies across the UK.
Drinkall will take over as CEO of the trust in the spring term, replacing Ian Comfort.
Drinkall’s previous position was chief executive of the Alpha Plus Group, which is one of the largest groups of independent schools in the UK, comprising 18 schools and colleges.
Before this, he worked at Cengage Learning and Macmillan Education in CEO roles.
The trust has suffered criticism from Ofsted this past year, with a letter in February saying AET was was failing too many pupils, with “mediocre” secondary academies, unacceptably low attendance and poor children doing particularly badly.
It has also seen a number of resignations from key staff.
The Academies Enterprise Trust is developing its management team, and has already appointed its chair Jack Boyer OBE, earlier this year.
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