Nigel Vivian has been a senior manager at the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) until November 2006 and has extensive experience in public sector management. His responsibilities at the TDA (and previously the TTA) have ranged from the accreditation, quality assessment and improvement of initial teacher training provision to planning and setting the Agency's strategic priorities.
He played a key part in the agency's transition from its original ITT focus to being a significant strategic player in the training and development of the whole school workforce.
At the start of his career, Nigel was a teacher of chemistry and became the head of science at a new comprehensive secondary school before joining Croydon local authority as school inspector. In that role he was one of the early pioneers in the 1980s to use pupil data to measure aspects of schools' performance.
Before joining the Teacher Training Agency, Nigel spent seven years as an assistant chief education officer responsible for school organisation in a London Borough. It was here he gained extensive project management experience and change management skills.
Nigel brings both a local and national government perspective on the challenges facing education, rooted in the credibility of thirteen years successful teaching.