Matthew Hood

Born in the Lancashire seaside town of Morecambe and brought up between there and Blackpool as part of a "big, complicated, non-nuclear family". He was the youngest of five children. Despite describing his childhood as 'great', his family were not well off and he spent a "decent chunk" of his early childhood and late teens living in a caravan.[1]

He attended Great Wood Primary School[2] in Morecambe, St. Wilfrid's CofE Primary School[3] in Halton on Lune and Lancaster Royal Grammar School.[4] He went on to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of York.

He married Josh MacAlister, Founder of Frontline[5] in June 2019 . They recently moved to Penrith, Cumbria, England.

Hood trained to be an economics teacher through Teach First in 2007, teaching in Edmonton, Tottenham. He went on to become a policy adviser at the Department for Education, then North East Regional Director at Teach First, before becoming assistant head at Morecambe's Heysham High School (now Bay Leadership Academy).

In 2015 he founded the Institute for Teaching, a charity focused on developing and improving teachers' expertise. In March 2018 the Institute for Teaching merged with Ambition School Leadership to become Ambition Institute,[6] an education charity tackling educational disadvantage through evidence-based professional development for teachers and school leaders.[7]

Hood is also Chair at Bay Leadership Academy[8] in Morecambe, Governor at Lancaster and Morecambe College[9] and an independent adviser to the Department for Education.[10]

Hood is a founding trustee at The Brilliant Club,[11] a post he stepped down from in 2021. In 2015 he was awarded a Churchill Fellowship.[12]

Hood co-founded Oak National Academy alongside David Thomas in 2020.[13]