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Following the announcement last week that four staffers, including head of children’s publishing Liz Cross, have left OUP Children’s Books in a restructure, The Bookseller understands that a number of other jobs have also gone within OUP Children's and the wider Oxford Education division, in which OUP Children's sits, in recent weeks.
In addition to the announced departures of Cross, senior commissioning editor Helen Mortimer, managing editor Kathy Webb and commissioning editor Rachel Howells, four further posts across editorial, sales and design are understood to have been axed in OUP Children’s, as it cuts its fiction publishing for older readers. Meanwhile six further posts are believed to have gone in the wider Oxford Education division. Most staff left the company in July.
OUP representatives have not issued any comment on these additional staff cuts.
Revealing OUP’s annual results in July, c.e.o. Nigel Portwood said that the three education divisions - English Language Teaching (ELT), Asia Education and Oxford Education - had a "challenging year" in the 12 months to end March 2019, with market contractions in the UK and Spain. The previous year also saw “challenging” conditions for the Education business.
OUP is restructuring its children’s publishing into two strands: Reading at Home, focusing on learning to read and reading for pleasure, producing picture books and fiction series, lead by senior publisher Lou John; and Learning at Home, for books which support vocabulary acquisition and development through dictionaries, thesauruses and language titles, led by senior publisher Michelle Williams.
Fathima Dada took over as m.d. of OUP Education late last year, succeeding Kate Harris.