Mark Lehain has revealed that he stepped down as interim director of the New Schools Network (NSN) because he was unable to pull off a merger with his other campaign group employer.

The free-schools charity announced this week that Mr Lehain would step down from his role at the end of the month and return to work full-time for Parents and Teachers for Excellence, which promotes “knowledge-rich” education.

Mr Lehain took to Twitter on Thursday afternoon to explain that he decided to return to PTE after his proposed merger was rejected.

‘Pros and cons’ to merger

He said that he told the NSN’s trustees that he would be interested in running the charity “long term” if he could “bring PTE with me, as it were”. Mr Lehain said he could see the “pros and cons” with this idea, but felt there was a “natural overlap”.

He added: “A few chats were had and, in the end, it was decided NSN and PTE could achieve more for kids staying as they were. Hence I’m going back to PTE full-time from 1 November and NSN will get themselves a shiny new director in the near future.”

Mr Lehain also said that he had struggled to balance both roles, and that doing so was “not really sustainable”.

Suggestions that there could be a conflict of interest between Mr Lehain’s dual roles were raised when his appointment to the NSN was announced in March.

Any merger would have also been controversial, given that NSN is an independent charity while the PTE is a campaign group that is lobbying for curriculum reform.