King Solomon Academy Governance

Academies are schools funded by the government with the freedom to govern independently – but all are accountable to the Secretary of State for Education. To share resources and best practice, many are part of multi-academy trusts – a network of schools under one legal body.

King Solomon Academy is part of Ark Schools - a leading education charity and one of the country’s top-performing academy operators. Ark is non-denominational and does not make any profit from running its schools.

Ark’s relationship with the Secretary of State is set out in the master funding agreement. There are also supplemental funding agreements for each individual school in the network, including King Solomon Academy.

Ark Schools Master Funding Agreement

King Solomon Academy Supplemental Funding Agreement

Every school in the Ark network is the legal responsibility of the Ark Schools Board. This board focuses on statutory duties and delegates most day-to-day responsibilities to each school’s individual Local Governing Body (LGB). This means that Ark Academy's governors are able to concentrate on the things that really matter – educational strategy, school outcomes and aspiration.

The Ark Schools Articles of Association and Decision Making Framework scheme of delegation can be found on the Ark Schools website.

Our local governing body

King Solomon Academy’s LGB is made up as follows:

• Six to 10 members appointed by Ark, to include the Chair - usually people with a local connection or interest who are committed to supporting educational opportunity in the area.
• The Principal
• Two parent governors
• Two staff governors
• One local local authority representative

Ark aims to create a balanced group that will have the right skills, connections and dynamic for the LGB to work well and support the school in achieving exceptional performance:

• Good insight into the specific challenges at the school and the general challenges of operating top-quality schools
• Excellent community links
• Specific skills as needed by/relevant to the school
• A link to the senior executive team of Ark

The LGB meets four times a year.

Contacting the governors

The Clerk to the Governors is Sakina Marzban (sakina.marzban@arkonline.org). Governors can be contacted through the Clerk.

If you are interested in becoming a governor, please visit the Ark Schools website. If you have any governance-related queries, please contact the Clerk.

Current governors

Jennifer Moses (Chair and Sponsor)

Jennifer Moses has spent the past two decades in education, public policy and philanthropy after a career in investment banking. Most recently, she co-founded and was CEO for seven years of Caliber Public Schools, a TK-8 charter school group in the East Bay in California with 1,700 students. She is now Chair. She is a founding Trustee of Absolute Return for Kids (ARK), one of the largest children’s charities in the UK, and co-founder and Chair of King Solomon Academy, an all-through state school in London. She is a partner at Ed-Mentor, LLC, a VC fund that invests in education technology startups. Prior to moving to California in late 2009, she was a senior policy adviser to then British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. She was previously Chief Executive of the policy think tank Centreforum, following her banking career as a Managing Director with Goldman Sachs. Jennifer is a graduate of Brown University, where she serves on the Corporation and is Chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, and Harvard Business School. She is married with three children.

Camilla Al-Hariri (Staff Governor)

Camilla is the Head of University and Careers Service at King Solomon Academy. She has worked at the Academy since 2012, after graduating from University of Cambridge with a 1st class degree in Natural Sciences (Zoology). Camilla began as our Upper School Administrator, working with our first secondary school cohort, co2016, and setting up the work experience programme and external exams processes. Since then, she has worked in formalising and delivering our school’s careers and university programme, ensuring all students are prepared for university and the workplace. She is motivated to be a governor to help contribute to the strategic decision making needed as the school moves forward and to ensure student preparedness for university and success in the workplace is a priority at every level of decision making.

Nafsika Butler-Thalassis (Local Authority Governor)

Nafsika Butler-Thalassis is the Cabinet member for Adult Social Care, Public Health and the Voluntary Sector in Westminster Council. Additionally, she works for the BME Health Forum, a local charity that specialises in reducing health inequalities for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities. She has two children, one of whom attends King Solomon Academy.

Paul Dunning (Ark Appointed Governor)

Tina Isaacs (Ark Appointed Governor)

Tina Isaacs has been working in the field of education since 1980, first as a university history lecturer, then as a education policy researcher (both in the US), then after moving to England in 1994, she worked at NCVQ, QCA and Ofqual. Her last position at Ofqual was Head of 14-19 Regulation. She ran an MA in Educational Assessment at the UCL Institute of Education from 2009 to 2016. She is now an Honorary Senior Lecturer, having retired in September 2016. Her education specialisms are: curriculum and qualifications development, implementation and evaluation. Her reasons for wanting to be a governor are to both 'give something back' and to return to more hands on educational endeavors because she has spent less time in schools than she would have liked. Many years ago she was a school governor in a primary school in Rochester NY and found that an incredibly rewarding experience.

Trevor McCrisken (Ark Appointed Governor)

Dr Trevor McCrisken is an Associate Professor in Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. His main teaching and research is on US foreign policy, particularly the role of national identity, the use of force, and portrayals of foreign policy in popular culture. He is also Chair of BASIC, a London-based non-governmental organisation promoting dialogue on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. As a Widening Participation and Outreach academic leader at Warwick, he has worked extensively with a number of schools and colleges nationally to encourage students from diverse backgrounds to apply to university. For the last four years has collaborated particularly with the students and teachers at King Solomon Academy. Trevor has been hugely impressed with the dedication and aptitude of the KSA students and the ethos of the school. He feels privileged to be able to work with KSA and now to serve as a school governor.

Rachel Mulvena (Staff Governor)

Rachel graduated in French and Chinese studies from the University of Nottingham, and is a passionate teacher and learner of languages. She completed a Masters in Chinese at SOAS in London after teachign abroad for a year, and joined King Solomon Academy through the Teach First programme in 2013. She has been working at KSA for six years, in which time she led the frontier cohort (Class of 2021) on their journey through secondary school. She is particularly interested in supporting student mental health and well being, and hopes that as Staff Governor, she can provide valuable insight into how the decisions we make as a school ensure that pupils are happy as well as academically successful.

Fatma Nasr (Parent Governor)

As a parent and language teacher, Fatma is always concerned about the quality of teaching and learning in schools.Fatma strongly believes that we must tackle the inequality in education, and is very willing to collaborate to achieve this. Fatma is also aware of the challenges that educators may face in schools nowadays, and wants to contribute to improving the lives of all the children and teachers by collaborating with the leaders of schools to be more cost effective.

Katie Oliver (Ark Appointed Governor)

Roger's motivation for being a governor is that he feels passionate about every child no matter what their background being given an equal chance to succeed academically and improve their future life opportunities. As a governor Roger brings his general experience and educational knowledge to bear in discussion with school leaders and not only support but can suggest improvements in educational standards and student welfare.

Max Haimendorf (Executive Principal)

Max Haimendorf graduated from Oxford and joined the first cohort of the Teach First programme, teaching Science in West London. Following work at Teach First central office he joined the consultants Oliver Wyman where he worked in finance strategy. Whilst there he wrote about the importance of small schools. In 2008 he was appointed as Secondary Headteacher of King Solomon Academy, starting the Secondary part of the school in September 2009. He has now led KSA through two outstanding Ofsted inspections and to achieve the highest GCSE results in the country for a non-selective school in 2015. He became all-through Principal of KSA and Executive Principal of Ark Paddington Green Primary Academy in September 2016.

All appointments are made by the Director of Governance for Ark. The term of a governor is three years, except for the Principal, who remains a governor for the duration of his time in post.

The register of interests and attendance information for governors can be found here: 

King Solomon Academy - Governor Register of Interests 2022-23.pdf

Ark King Solomon Academy LGB Attendance Log 2021-22.pdf