The Bedford College Group – Chief Operating Officer

Be part of our team!

Formed in 2017 following the merger of Bedford College and Tresham College, The Bedford College Group is now the largest provider of education in the South East Midlands, with over 18,000 students passing through our doors each year. Today, the Group is made up of a family of colleges across Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire, including Bedford College, Central Bedfordshire College, and Tresham College, among others. This is an exciting time for the Group, we are committed to ensuring significant improvements to our whole college infrastructure and have ambitious plans for our estate with a large capital development programme planned.

We are seeking a Chief Operating Officer to provide strategic leadership and management across the Group’s Estates, IT and Health & Safety functions. This new role will be integral to us ensuring that all our students have an outstanding student experience and achieve excellent outcomes. The successful candidate will be a proven leader with experience of large-scale infrastructure projects from within a similarly complex environment. Strong commercial awareness, excellent communication skills and the ability to translate strategy into operational plans are essential.

Dear Colleague,

Thank you for your interest in the role of Chief Operating Officer at The Bedford College Group (TBCG). The Group is the 7th largest further education college group in the sector by income and comprises 7 distinct colleges with 3 further educational colleges, 2 sixth form colleges, 1 agricultural college and 1 national college for motorsport.

Our values are extremely important to us and keep the student at the heart of everything we do, but none more so than those of valuing teamwork, continuously improving, caring and inclusive, all of which sit at the heart of this role.

The successful candidate will provide strategic leadership and management across key professional service departments of TBCG and is integral to ensuring the Group achieves continuous improvement by ensuring our staff have the right tools and infrastructure to achieve excellent student experience and outcomes.

To succeed in this role, you will come to us as a successful senior leader of corporate services functions within a similarly complex environment as that of TBCG’s. As well as being an excellent communicator, you should have a strong commercial awareness and the ability to translate strategy into operational plans.

You will be coming to TBCG at an extremely exciting period of change, with our new CEO having commenced in January 2024 with a passionate commitment to, and vision of excellence that will take us forward in the next stage of TBCG’s evolution.

Interested parties are strongly encouraged to contact our FE Associates recruitment partner, Jo.Johnston@fea.co.uk, to arrange an initial discussion prior to submitting an application.

With best wishes

Yiannis Koursis
Group Chief Executive