Amethyst Advisory

MEET THE TEAM

We each have more than 25 years’ education experience and have worked together for 20 years

Richard’s career in education began at Birmingham’s local authority, developing and marketing strategic financial services to schools. He was also heavily involved in staff development as the services evolved. After eight years Richard expanded his experience in the role of Strategic Business Manager at a large secondary school, providing financial support, HR support and premises works.

With a now extensive résumé in education, Richard set up RDP Consultancy, delivering strategic support to secondary, primary and special schools and reporting to the Governing Bodies.
He continued to develop strategic support services to schools and academies for 13 years as part of his role as one of the Group Directors at drb before founding Amethyst Advisory in 2014.

Richard’s core focus at Amethyst is to build partnerships with schools and academies, providing strategic support services and smoothing the path of education management.

With over 20 years’ education experience and previous consultant roles at Schools Financial Services and drb, Roger has guided maintained schools from the beginning of the delegation of their budgets until the present day, with the introduction of academies and free schools.

While working as a Senior Consultant at drb, Roger was also employed as a Strategic Business Manager at a large special school in Birmingham, giving him a clear insight into how schools and academies operate and how to approach individual priorities and challenges.

Roger’s expert knowledge and experience in education management, including finance, HR, IT packages and premise s are constantly being updated as he takes a keen interest in the latest changes in the education sector, both at a local and national level.

Jayne has been intricately involved with education management since the local management of schools and the delegation of their budgets were introduced. As a Senior Consultant at Schools Financial Services, Jayne and her team developed the initial levels of service to schools and wrote the budget monitoring training that schools bought into.

Moving to a large secondary school in North Birmingham, Jayne experienced education from the other side as a Strategic Business Manager. With a team of more than 50 people, Jayne was responsible for finance, premises management, health and safety, office management and HR and also reported to the Finance and Premises Governing Body Committees.

Before founding Amethyst Advisory, Jayne spent ten years as a Senior Executive Consultant at drb, providing a strategic financial and bursary service to schools and academies. A key achievement was developing the Multi Academy Trust service to the church diocese in Sheffield and Derby.

Mark has over 20 years experience in dealing with schools finances. Following 10 years in private industry, he continued his career with the Birmingham Education Department, where he spent 10 years. During this time, Mark was involved with the implementation of Local Management of Schools as well as developing financial services to schools in Birmingham.

Mark then, worked in for the London Borough of Hounslow as a Senior Finance Officer, his main role being advising on school finances together with training and compiling the Section 251 formula for schools.

He has also worked as a School Support Officer in a large Secondary school for two years, with responsibility for Finance, Supply Cover, Administration, Marketing, Training and all aspects of a Private Finance Initiative site, including negotiating contracts and project management.

Mark commenced his role with drb Management in 2004 as a Senior Consultant and had considerable experience with Local Authority Maintained schools, Voluntary Aided schools and academies. In addition to work with schools Mark devised and delivered many training courses advising on the continuous changes in education finance.