Nicola Taylor

Nicola Taylor is the Director of SEND at Bishop Bewick Catholic Education Trust 

Nicola is Director of SEND at Bishop Bewick Catholic Education Trust, a Trust of 5 secondary schools and 34 primary schools across the local authorities of Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland. We employ 2000 staff and work with around 14000 students. 

Nicola has worked her whole career in the field of SEN across a range of roles and within a range of school settings, as well as spending a period of time specialising in delivering pre school services to the families of deaf children. In recent years, she was a strategic leader of SEN Services at Northumberland County Council, working closely with schools to deliver rapid improvements before moving to BBCET in September 2022 following its rapid expansion from 3 – 39 schools in 3 years.  

She is entirely focussed on improving outcomes for children and young people, and on harnessing the passion and energy of staff. She contributes to a range of national, regional and local networks and is a school Governor, alongside being a Trustee for a Northumberland based charity investing in nurturing wellbeing amongst young adults. 

She is particularly interested in developing people; practitioners and leaders. She is an accredited trainer for the Living Leader Personal Leadership programme; a programme which has been delivered globally to over 95,000 people and has a proven track record of transforming the lives of individuals, teams and businesses.  The programme underpins the leadership strategy within the Trust, emphasising that leadership is not a job title, it is a mindset.