Mark Bedlow Email & Phone Number

Milton Keynes, England, United Kingdom

Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

London, United Kingdom

Mark was appointed to this role in June 2019. Reporting to AQA’s CEO, he has responsibility for the timely and accurate delivery of two in every three GCSEs and one in every three A levels awarded each year in England. He is responsible for a team of 280 FTEs and an annual expenditure of approximately £92m.

London, United Kingdom

This exam industry body represents the eight largest awarding organisations in the UK with an appointee from each member sitting on the Board of Directors with a rotating chair, Mark has been a board member for four years and has twice been chair in the year to September 2016 and again from May 2018 through the September 2019: a period of unprecedented change for qualifications in the UK and also for JCQ itself

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Mark was appointed into this role following a re-organisation with responsibilities for the timely and accurate delivery of awards, the relationship with all of OCR’s regulators, risk management and the Programme Management Office. In this role, Mark was also been key in transitioning into the organisation further interim CEOs, and in the creation and implementation of OCR’s current strategy. Mark continued as OCR’s lead on the project to replace the group’s legacy IT exam processing systems and was appointed as the first chair of the newly established Group Risk and Compliance Board, responsible for advising Cambridge Assessment’s corporate board on regulatory compliance, risk and risk management, business continuity and data governance (including GDPR). Mark continued in his role as Responsible Officer.

Cambridge, United Kingdom, Coventry

Mark filled the newly created role of Chief Delivery Officer and was appointed as OCR’s Responsible Officer following the departure of OCR’s CEO in September 2015. In this senior position Mark led the business and senior management team (SMT) in the transition between three CEO’s over a 12 month period adapting to their different styles and focii and managing the loss of two members of the SMT. He had full responsibility for the cost effective production, timely delivery and accuracy of all general and vocational qualifications issued by OCR with a staff of approximately 250 holding line responsibility for the Directors of Operations, Assessment as well as Risk & Compliance. Mark worked with the Interim Chief Executive (October 2015 – July 2016) to develop a strategy to return OCR to a financial sustainable business and appoint a firm of consultants to support the implementation, whilst driving further improvements in the assessment delivery process. Mark led the presentation of the national 2016 results for GCSEs and GCEs on behalf of JCQ to the UK press. He has worked with incoming CEO (August 2016) and consultants to design and execute the plan to implement and execute the restructuring which resulted in a loss of approximately 70 posts.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Mark took on this newly created role within OCR in March 2013. It entailed creating a single multi-disciplinary business function from previously disparate groups. This was subsequently enlarged following a business reorganisation comprising a team of approximately 40 multi-disciplinary experts. The team provides expertise and advice to the whole business in its regulatory compliance with Ofqual’s General Conditions of Recognition (including Appeals, Malpractice and Complaints), risk management including contract and other operational risks. Mark’s team was also responsible for all business planning and performance reporting, strategy and internal communications for all of OCR. In the absence of the CEO, Mark stepped up to lead the delivery of the Summer Series 2014 following the failure of its electronic script marking system and the consequent shortage of examiners. This entailed meetings with the Chief Regulator of Ofqual, CEO of UCAS and the Minister of Education to re-assure them about OCR’s ability to manage the situation. Following this, Mark was then appointed as Programme Director responsible to the CEO for the re-building of trust in OCR’s ability to deliver a robust and safe exam series. Mark worked across business functions within OCR and with partners within Cambridge Assessment and externally, introducing a more robust, effective and resilient end to end process with improvements to planning, business process reporting, risk management and contingency planning to ensure the timely and accurate award of results to candidates. Most importantly Mark played a leading role in changing the culture of the OCR to one better positioned to deliver continual improvement. As a necessary consequence, led the design and implementation of a project governance process within OCR. Mark has led various programme and project boards responsible for driving change within the assessment delivery process.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Internal ‘Chief Operating Officer’ role for this business unit for 18 months through to July 2011, reporting to Business Unit Leader with responsibilities for finance and people, including setting and agreeing revenue and people budgets, management of performance (financial and operational), working capital management, people recruitment and development. Over this period, the business grew from a team of 60 with external revenues of £5.5m to a team of 70-80 with revenues of £7.2m. Mark improved the focus and visibility of financial performance and introduced robust procedures for financial and operational forecasting.Mark was Risk Assurance Leader for the three offices of St Albans, Cambridge and Norwich throughout the period. This involved growing a team of four, which was originally lacking local leadership and providing extremely limited coverage of the region, into a multi-disciplinary team (IT general controls, IT risk, IT security, data governance and security) of 16, building client revenues across a broad range of organisations, sectors (mid tier listed, public sector, privately owned) and industries (travel, business services, retailing).Responsibilities included the provision of assurance and advice at board level on IT general controls and business processes for a variety of organisations. Mark also advised on the delivery of IT risk reviews, threat, vulnerability and penetration testing and implementation of IT security frameworks for CIOs.Mark’s non-financial audit roles included – third party assurance over a variety of published non-financial information or business processes and controls, including business to business services, shared service centres for Health Trusts in South East, carbon reporting for a FTSE 100 company and pioneered third party assurance into new areas such as laboratory compliance process.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Whilst audit engagement leader for a wide variety of clients (2001 – 8), Mark gained experience of:• IPOs having lead the PwC Reporting Accountants team for the listing on the main market of the LSE of a Cambridge based, PE backed technology company (2007) and a listing on AiM of a university technology transfer company (2006);• Multi-national travel businesses which re-engineered and outsourced their respective finance functions;• Full / partial disposal of a property business (2002) and a minerals business (2003);• IFRS through leadership of two conversion projects; and • US GAAP and Sarbanes Oxley regime with major UK subsidiaries of SEC registered entities.Building on his experience and knowledge of UK travel agents and tour operators, Mark was a respected expert member of PwC Travel Group (1998 – 2004) speaking at a number of industry conferences and leading the PwC/ABTA Benchmarking surveys for travel agents and tour operators (2000 – 2002). Mark was a member of the ICAEW working party which developed Technical Release AUDIT 02/03 and its successor AAF 02/09, “New arrangements for accountants reporting to the Civil Aviation Authority” and AUDIT 02/02 “New arrangements for reporting to the Association of British Travel Agents Limited (ABTA)”.Mark also held a business development role within the Cambridge office across all lines of service (2004-6). This included: building relationships with local banks and legal firms; linking into local technology start ups; and encouraging and developing business development as a culture within the office.

Advanced Leadership Programme, Business Leadership

Certificate In Practices And Principles Of Assessment, Exam Assessment, Pass

12 month distance learning course with weekend workshops on the discipline of exam assessment. Typically taken by professional exam.

Ba (Hons), Economics & Accounting