Chief Operating Officer; COO

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The Governors and Headmaster of More House School, Frensham seek to appoint a highly skilled senior leader, expert in strategic planning and operational oversight, for the post of Chief Operating Officer (COO).

We have built something that works. Now we want to build more of it - and we are looking for the person who can help us do it.

More House School is the leading independent school in the country for pupils who experience Specific Learning Difficulties, Developmental Language Disorder and associated conditions. Over thirty years we have grown from 65 pupils to 515. We have been awarded the highest gradings in six successive Ofsted inspections over more than a decade, and were judged Exceptional under the new inspection framework in February 2026.

Around 270 mainstream schools across the UK now come to us for help in becoming more inclusive.

We are full. Demand for places exceeds what our campus can provide, and it has done for years. Nearly 70% of our pupils have their places funded by one of 35 local authorities under an EHCP, which gives us an unusually resilient income base - and a waiting list we cannot serve. That is why the next chapter of More House is about growth, and why we are recruiting a Chief Operating Officer with the range to lead it.

We are in year two of a five-year strategy. Its central ambitions are:

• To extend our provision to girls. This is our foremost priority. There are many girls who would flourish in a More House education and who cannot currently access one, and we have committed publicly to changing that.
• To grow beyond the Frensham campus - by merger, acquisition, partnership or new site. We are actively evaluating opportunities, and we would expect to be the senior partner in any of them, protecting the model and the culture that make this school what it is.
• To continue developing our Frensham campus. Construction of a major new sports facility begins this summer, and the next phase of campus development is being planned now.
• To grow our outreach and consultancy work, and to keep influencing national policy on SEND and inclusion.

The Chief Operating Officer is the most senior non-teaching post in the School, reporting to the Headmaster and working closely with the Board of Governors and the Core Leadership Group. The role has two dimensions, and we mean both of them.

Run. You will lead Business Operations - Finance, HR, Estates, IT, Administration, Catering and governance support, some 60 staff in total - and hold our operational, financial and regulatory position at the standard our inspections reflect. Our foundations are sound; your job is to keep them that way while the School changes around them.

Grow. Alongside the Headmaster, you will be the executive lead on the commercial, financial and delivery side of our expansion: appraising opportunities, building the models, running due diligence, directing the external advisers, and project managing transactions and new provision through to completion and integration.

You will be an experienced senior leader who enjoys running a broad and diverse operation well, and who wants to do something more ambitious than steady state. You do not need to be an accountant, but you must be able to own the finance function, hold your own with the Governors on financial matters, and be comfortable modelling where this School is in one year, five years and ten.

Experience of mergers, acquisitions, group formation, or of opening and integrating a new site or division would set a candidate apart - as would an understanding of local authority commissioning and EHCP funding. We will resource specialist transaction advice externally; what we need in this role is the judgement and the project discipline to direct it.

Above all, you will need a real affinity with what we do here. This is a values-led charity, not a…