J. Greenwood - Chief Executive Advisor & Trustee

Julie began her teaching career in Lower Gornal, Dudley in 1990. Over the next 6 years she worked in Bilston, Wolverhampton and then onto Erdington in Birmingham. Julie originally specialised in PE and Special Needs and in 2001 became Deputy Head Teacher at Leigh Primary School in Inner City Birmingham.

In 2006 she was appointed Head Teacher at Leigh Primary School and over the next 5 years focused on turning a satisfactory school to a ‘Good’ school in all areas, with ‘Outstanding’ for Capacity for Sustained Improvement and Leadership and Management. 

In 2011, Julie became a National Leader of Education and started her journey of providing school to school support, to schools in difficulty. In 2012, jointly with the Deputy Head Teacher of Leigh Primary School, they led a Special Measures school to ‘Good’ in all areas over a 12-month period, whilst still leading Leigh Primary School.

In 2014, Leigh Multi Academy Trust was formed and as CEO, Julie has continued to take on a number of Interim Headships at schools either in Special Measures or Requires Improvement. The impact of this work can be clearly seen as schools that she has either led or supported have moved from Ofsted categories. Leigh Trust currently comprises of 5 large inner city primary schools. Three of these schools were previously in Special Measures but are both now ‘Good’ schools. Over the last 5 years Julie has had the opportunity to carry out the headship in 4 of the 5 schools in Leigh Trust. Her passion has been to recruit and retain high quality senior leaders. With these skilled teams, Leigh Trust has been able to create bespoke school improvement packages which have led to outstanding and rapid school improvement. Julie is also a Member for a local Multi Academy Trust and is a proactive member of Birmingham Education Partnership (BEP) working with other Multi Academy Trusts across Birmingham and the West Midlands.