New Chapter: Lloyd Hankin on joining Harris, shared services and building the operations behind great teaching

Lloyd Hankin joined the Harris Federation as Shared Services Director in September 2026. Before that, he spent thirty years in the commercial world and three years running operations at a specialist SEND trust. We caught him at the end of his first week to ask how he ended up in education, what he has made of Harris so far, and what he wants from the Federation's next Director of Digital, Data and Technology.

It genuinely was an accident. My wife has been in education her whole career – she's a deputy principal at a primary school near where we live – and I always said I'd never go anywhere near the education sector. I'd done thirty years in business by then: about half of it in high street retail, running businesses and delivering profit, and the other half in the defence sector, making sure operational services were delivered for the people who needed them.

Then one day our youngest, Tom, lost his school. He was at a very special school, and it closed down, literally overnight, without any warning. Suddenly we had no school for Tom, so I took a break from work and stayed at home to support him until we could find another suitable placement for him. That went on for four or five months.

When we'd finally found him a new setting, and I could get back to work, pretty much the first job I saw on LinkedIn was a Chief Operating Officer role at a Trust for young people with special educational needs and disabilities. And I thought, well, why not? Why not try and help families like ours, and kids like Tom, not have to go through what we'd just been through.

What I didn't know – and it sounds naive now – was how powerful it is to feel like you're contributing to young people's opportunities. I'd spent three decades in business, and I had no idea. None. So that's how I got here, and I haven't wanted to go back.

So why Harris?

Two things, really. The first was the mission: Harris is about giving young people from disadvantaged backgrounds a better shot, and that hit home for me because I came from a tricky background myself. If nobody had given me opportunities, I wouldn't be sitting here. So that mattered.

The second was scale: at my last trust we had about fifteen schools and two thousand learners. Harris has 59 academies and teaches one in every 41 young people in London. Being able to have that kind of impact on that many children is a pretty big draw. And to be honest, an organisation this size is much closer to the scale of businesses I’m used to, so it felt like familiar ground.

You're only a few days in. What have you found?

In a lot of ways, it's what I hoped for. Which is worth saying, because you never actually know until you walk in the door.

What I've found is a lot of people who really care about what the Federation exists for. There's a golden thread that runs through the organisation, and everybody I've spoken to – they can all tell you, quite clearly, how their job connects to the young people. You hope that's there. You can't be sure. So, I was pleased to see it.

The other thing I've noticed is the standards. The Federation sets a high bar for itself, and I think that's right. If we're telling young people that standards matter, we've got to lead that ourselves. I actually see it as one of the things that keeps the central teams connected to the academies.

What do you bring from thirty years outside education?

I know what good looks like. In a commercial business, you live and die by the pound and by the profitability of the business, and every bit of that comes down to service. If you don't look after your customers properly, somebody else will, and then they’re not your customers anymore! So, I've spent a long time learning what good service really is and what value for money actually means. I'd say, quite honestly, that parts of the public sector have struggled with that over the years.

Put that together with what I've learned about education – three years in the SEND world, plus twenty years of my wife on the sofa telling me about the challenges in her school and the sector more broadly – and I think I bring an unusual mix of skills and knowledge. I understand what it means to work somewhere so heavily regulated, where every academy has to be Ofsted-ready every day. And I understand what makes schools different from any business I've ever run: every child only gets one go at this. Every day they aren't getting the most out of school is a day they don't get back.

 

Where do you see digital, data and AI making the biggest difference – teachers, pupils or central teams?

All three, but not in the same way.

For teachers, if it's done properly, it just makes life easier. Less time sat at a laptop making resources or marking means more time with the kids in front of them. That's the prize. AI-assisted marking, learning platforms that adapt to the individual learner instead of pitching everything at the middle – there's so much opportunity there.

For pupils, I have to keep reminding myself that they were born into all of this. They're digital natives. They came into the world with a device in their hand, more or less. I was 25 when the first mobile phone went on sale, so it's a different planet now. And the pace of change is enormous. Three years ago, who'd have thought AI could write you a letter? Now it can do almost anything. Who knows where it'll be in three more. If we fall behind, our learners fall behind. So we have to keep up, and we have to give them tools that meet them where they are, coach them, give them feedback while they're working.

But – and this is a big but – it has to be done carefully. Every one of those opportunities comes with a risk attached. I don't want anyone who's gung-ho about getting the latest thing in before we've done our homework and made sure of its benefit and that children can use it safely.

And for us in the central teams, the more we can streamline, automate, get rid of double entry and duplicate effort, the more time we've got to deliver the services that matter. Which makes life easier for the academies. Which means more time for teachers with the children. It all points the same way.

You're recruiting a Director of Digital, Data and Technology. What's the honest starting point?

I'll be straight with you, and I'm not sure whether this makes the job more or less appealing: it's in good shape. If you look at the pieces of an IT organisation – infrastructure, service delivery, data and MIS, cyber – all four are in a good place. There isn't one where I'm looking at it thinking, " Oh no, what are we going to do about that?"

So, this isn't a rescue job; it's about continuous improvement – getting from good to great. Keeping up with a technology stack that doesn't sit still and making sure we're at the right level. We're not going to be world-leading tech innovators, and I don't think we should pretend to be. But we should be at the front of the queue when it comes to adopting things that work for our learners. And there's real room to improve how we deliver the service into academies, and how our big Federation systems work alongside the technology directorate.

 

Why is it a Director of Digital, Data and Technology, and why at director level?

Because that's what the job actually is. We've got a big, complicated technology stack, a huge amount of data, and we're changing all the time in the digital space. For Harris, it's much more about digital, data and technology than "information" in the traditional sense.

Why director level? Because it's critical. That's the simple answer. If we don't get good technology into the academies and good data into teaching, we're in trouble. It has to be right, and that's why it sits where it sits.

What would a brilliant first year look like?

We haven't broken anything. I'm only half joking. People come into big jobs, and by day two they want to make their mark, so they start pulling things apart before they understand them. I'd steer well clear of that.

I want someone who takes the time to get out into the academies, build relationships, and actually understand what they need. There's a decent chance the person we appoint won't come from education. If they do, great. If not, there's a lot of learning to do when you first come into the education sector. There is also a lot of stakeholder mapping and network-building to do, and a lot of reassuring the academies that the technology side is heading somewhere good. Whoever it is needs to lead with credibility, and support us through the big change programmes we've already got running. Do that well in year one, and the rest follows.

What should the successful candidate know about working alongside you?

I expect people to do the job they're there to do, and I don't micromanage. I'll set the strategic direction, and I'll look to my directors to turn that into something their teams can actually deliver. I manage through relationships and influence, not by telling people what to do. I don't shout. I don't have a temper. I think I'm reasonably nice to work with.

I'm open to being challenged; I don't have all the answers, and I'm not a technology expert – that's what I'll be relying on this person for. I am cognisant of the bigger picture, understand the needs of our schools and the opportunities for our learners, and I translate that into what good looks like and where the improvement opportunities are.

More than anything, I like to enable people, empower them to deliver and then get out of the way. I'll coach, I'll give direction where it's useful, and then I'll let people get on with it. And what you get back, when you trust people like that, is that they want to do a great job, because you've let them.

We're hiring: The Harris Federation is recruiting a Director of Digital, Data and Technology to lead digital, data and technology across 59 academies in London and Essex. Find out more and apply: https://lnkd.in/etxRTuYb