David Hoare

In 2014 The Guardian reported that: "David Hoare was drafted in to rescue the troubled AET Education at the start of 2014, after the academy chain was lambasted for poor standards and lavish expenses claims. Now the veteran businessman finds himself chairing the school standards regulator, Ofsted, at a time when it is under growing pressure to pay closer attention to academies. AET, the UK's largest taxpayer-funded academy chain, was criticised by the former education secretary Michael Gove for poor management of its schools. Hoare was appointed in an unpaid capacity after the chain had gone through a period of rapid expansion in 2011-12. He will stand down from the role in September.

"Hoare has a 40-year business career, with a sideline in turning around failing companies. He started out in the oil industry, at Esso, before a 10-year stint at the Bain consultancy. In 1987, he co-founded his own consultancy, Talisman, to help underperforming companies. He has combined this work with senior roles in industries from fashion and packaging, to shipping and postal services.

A former chief executive of Laura Ashley and Radio Rentals, he has also chaired Virgin Express. Since 2010, he has been chairman of the Teenage Cancer Trust. Educated at the exclusive private school Marlborough College, Hoare went on to study engineering at Birmingham University and business at Stanford Business School.

His interest in education dates back to the early 1990s and he has served as an academies ambassador for the government. As well as AET, company filings show that Hoare was a founder member of the Attwood Academies Trust, launched in 2012 by Tom Attwood, the government's social mobility "tsar", and a non-executive director of work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith's thinktank, the Centre for Social Justice. While the outgoing head of Ofsted, Lady Morgan, has said there was a "determined effort" to appoint Tories to her job, Hoare's credentials are not obviously deep blue..."

Affiliations

• Trustee, Academies Enterprise Trust