After school, he worked in Canada and Australia between 1978 and 1988, initially in farming but later buying and selling a variety of businesses.

The aim of NIOT is to boost the quality of teaching and school leadership by carrying out research applying these insights to its professional development programmes, and sharing findings with the sector.

[19] Agnew was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the School System, in the Department for Education, on 28 September 2017.

[25] Agnew became Minister of State for Efficiency and Transformation jointly at the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury on 14 February 2020.

[26][27] In April 2021 he was accused of a conflict of interest over his shares in Public Group, a firm helping companies bid for government contracts.

[28] On 24 January 2022, Agnew resigned as Minister of State for Efficiency and Transformation after strongly criticising the government's failure to tackle billions of pounds worth of fraud in the Coronavirus Bounce Back Loan Scheme.

Agnew accused the government of making "schoolboy errors" through giving loans to more than 1,000 companies which were not trading when the pandemic happened.