Claudia Cubbage

Headteacher and Career Change Coach

Claudia Cubbage is a UK-based career change coach and headteacher coach with over 30 years’ experience in education. She spent 25 years in senior leadership and a decade as a headteacher. Her work focuses on helping headteachers and school leaders lead effectively and sustainably in increasingly complex educational systems. Alongside this, she supports professionals from outside education who are navigating career change and seeking clarity about what comes next.
 
Claudia holds a degree in industrial design, an MBA in Strategic Leadership, a Level 7 Diploma in Life Coaching, and is a Personalised Care Institute certified health and wellbeing coach. She began her career as a design technology teacher, teaching resistant materials, electronics, and graphics. Over time, she went on to lead high-performing teams and support school improvement at system level. She was seconded on three occasions by the local authority as an associate headteacher, coaching leadership teams to secure sustained improvement, before becoming a substantive headteacher.
 
Since retiring from headship, Claudia has founded RenewEd Ltd and created the Compass framework. This framework underpins her RenewEd Leadership coaching and is explored in depth in her forthcoming book RenewEd Leadership, the first in the RenewEd book series on leadership, career, and confidence.
 
She was also a member of a national Headteacher Advisory Group from its inception until her retirement from headship. She now provides consultancy services to educational charities and organisations, contributing to system-level work and the development of national guidance and curriculum resources.
 
Before her career in education, Claudia was an international athlete and a trailblazer in women’s pole vaulting during the 1980s. Competing at a time when women were not formally permitted to take part shaped her long-standing interest in confidence, resilience, and performance under pressure. Her work has since been recognised through industry awards and through selection for interview by an international platform highlighting leadership journeys and professional impact, with a focus on inspiring women in business.