Aimee Tinkler

Teacher & system leader for small and rural schools

Aimée Tinkler has been a teacher for over 20 years during which time she has taught and led in schools in a variety of circumstances and contexts. Most recently, Aimée has been Head of School at Carsington and Hopton Primary School in Derbyshire, a small, rural primary school where she has taught the infant class whilst also leading the curriculum across the federation of four. She is part of the Ofsted Small Schools Reference Group and has worked with schools across the country as a system leader with a particular focus on supporting development in small and rural schools. Aimée has worked with many organisations across the wider sector in an advisory capacity as well as designing content and facilitating the new suite of NPQs. She is closely involved with the work of the Chartered College of Teaching where she is Vice President, a Founding Fellow and chairs the Membership Committee. Aimée is engaged in doctoral research at UCL Institute of Education and has published research with a number of organisations including The British Council. Aimée contributes regularly to education media and shares her work at events across the country. 

Anderson Jeremiah

Senior Lecturer of World Christianity

Anderson H M Jeremiah is a Senior Lecturer of World Christianity at University of Lancaster and Visiting Professor of Anglican Studies at Episcopal Divinity School, New York. Anderson serves as the Canon Theologian of Blackburn Cathedral and member of the Faith and Order Commission for CofE. Anderson grew up in India and was ordained as a priest in the Church of South India (an Anglican Province). Anderson’ research interests and publications focus on the lived facet of World Christianity, and its theological and missional engagement with the wider society. Anderson is deeply passionate about social, racial, and environmental justice as a Gospel imperative and central to Christian Discipleship. Anderson has been involved in hinger education for the past two decades and works with schools’ outreach through Lancaster university. As a public theologian, Anderson has published widely on themes including Political Theology, Liberation Hermeneutics and Radical Ecclesiology and Mission."

Ben Lindsay

Founder of Power The Fight

Ben is founder of Power The Fight, a charity launched in January 2019 to train and empower communities to end youth violence.

One of The Evening Standard’s Progress 1000 London’s most influential people for 2018, Ben is an experienced trainer and facilitator with more than 19 years spent working with high risk young people in the field of gangs and serious youth violence.

In 2010 Ben developed the gangs and serious youth violence strategy for Camden Council and then went on to work for the mental health charity MAC-UK leading their mini mac project.

Ben was Chair of the Greenwich Independent Advisory Group until 2016. Between 2016 -2020, Ben was lead pastor at Emmanuel New Cross in South East London. He currently sits on the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s Violence Reduction Unit reference group and on the cross-party Youth Violence Commission.

His first book, the No1 Bestseller, ‘We Need To Talk About Race – Understanding the Black Experience in White Majority Churches‘ was released in July 2019 through SPCK Publishing.

David Ford

Fellow of Selwyn College &  Reader in the Church of England

David Ford OBE is a Fellow of Selwyn College, a Reader in the Church of England, and was Regius Professor of Divinity in Cambridge University (1991-2015). Before that he lectured in Birmingham University (1976-91) and was church warden in St Luke’s Church in the inner city. He is Irish, and married to Deborah,an Anglican priest and psychotherapist. His publications include: The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary; A Kind of Upside-Downness: Learning Disabilities and Transformational Community (co-edited); and The Shape of Living. He co-founded the interfaith practice of Scriptural Reasoning, and co-chairs the Rose Castle Foundation, a centre for reconciliation in Cumbria.

Emma Turner

Best Selling Author, Podcast Host and experienced school leader.

Emma Turner is an experienced teacher and school leader, having worked in education for 25 years. She currently works part time at Discovery Trust leading CPD and Research over 15 schools. In addition to her role at Discovery, she has multiple other roles across the sector. Emma is a member of the advisory board for the GEC; the DfE regional lead for Flexible working; a member of the DfE specialist advisory group for flexible working; and a fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching. She is a guest lecturer for multiple Universities and SCITT providers, and is an experienced school improvement partner working with Trusts and schools both nationally and internationally. Emma is also Co Host of the popular John Catt podcast, “Mind the Gap” with Tom Sherrington.

Emma has written four bestselling education books including:

• Be More Toddler
• Let’s talk about flex
• The Extended Mind – In Action (With David Goodwin & Oliver Caviglioli)
• Simplicitus – The interconnected primary curriculum and effective subject leadership

She tweets as @Emma_Turner75 

Gary Aubin

Author, Blogger and Education Endowment Foundation Associate for SEND

Gary Aubin is the author of The Lone SENDCO, a handbook of 300 questions and answers for busy SENDCOs. He works as the Education Endowment Foundation's Associate for SEND, having been their SEND Content Specialist. In this role, he has spoken to hundreds of school leaders about the evidence base behind high-quality teaching for SEND. Alongside this, he leads on SEND provision for a Multi Academy Trust of 10 primary and secondary schools. He is a secondary teacher, former primary and secondary SENDCO and former secondary Head of Year. Gary also authors the SEND Matters UK blog.

Kathryn Morgan

Senior Capacity Improvement Advisor for the Teaching School Hubs Council

Kathryn is the Senior Capacity Improvement Advisor for the Teaching School Hubs Council. Kathryn leads the design, development and quality assurance of the TSH Support Programme. Kathryn ensures the programme keeps pace with the evolving policy landscape and hubs’ role within it and enables hubs to successfully meet their DfE Conditions of Designation.

Kathryn is a former primary Deputy Head Teacher, MAT Director of Professional Development, Chair of Governors and charity trustee. Having previously worked at Ambition Institute (Associate Dean for Learning Design) and the Teacher Development Trust (Head of Leadership Development), Kathryn is passionate about working in the field of teacher and leader education. Kathryn is currently studying an MA in Educational Leadership at the University of Gloucestershire, where she is also a Research Associate. She is working on an ERASMUS+ project on the sensemaking of school leaders to better understand the types of problems leaders face and their approach to finding and implementing solutions.

Dr Krish Kandiah

Author & Social Entrepreneur

Dr Kandiah is a social entrepreneur with a vision to help solve some of society’s seemingly intractable problems through building partnerships across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He is the chair of the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board where he brings strategic leadership to the finding of permanent loving families for children in the care system working across the sector and advising the English government. He the director of the Sanctuary Foundation which seeks to support refugees coming to the UK. He is the author of 16 books including the award winning Whistle Stop Tales: Around the World in 10 Bible Stories. Krish and his wife Miriam live in Oxfordshire with their six children through birth, adoption and fostering.

Lekha Sharma

Author & Primary Curriculum Trust Lead

Lekha Sharma is a Primary Curriculum Trust Lead, author of ‘Curriculum to Classroom’, and a postgraduate student studying Learning and Teaching at The University of Oxford.

Lucy Moore

Head of the Growing Faith Foundation

Lucy is Head of the Growing Faith Foundation for the Church of England, helping schools, churches and households to work together for the spiritual flourishing of all children and young people. She is the founder of Messy Church and developed it through her work at BRF until early 2022. She worked as a secondary school teacher of languages and subsequently in many primary schools across the UK through the Barnabas in Schools RE programme, bringing the Bible to life through storytelling and drama. She lives with her husband in the Peak District in a draughty vicarage and enjoys walking the dog and joining in village life.

Dr Margaret James

National Director of SIAMS

Margaret is the first National Director of SIAMS and she has been in the role since March 2021. For the five years before that, she was the Director of Education for the Diocese of Worcester. She is an experienced leader within Church of England education and has worked in school, local authority, diocesan, and national educational leadership roles for approximately twenty years.

Margaret’s educational passion is SIAMS, gaining her Doctorate in Education in that field in 2018, and she has spent almost two decades involved in SIAMS leadership. Margaret is dedicated to ensuring that inspection has a deeply rooted cohesion and integrity, thereby enabling it to make a significant and positive contribution to the development of high-quality Church school education. 

Mike Haslam

Chaplaincy Adviser, Diocese of Bath and Wells

Chair of Trustees, Centre for Chaplaincy in Education

Mike is animated by faith, family, friends [including spaniels], running, mountains and the sea. He leads a rapidly growing network of over 160 chaplaincies of all sectors in Somerset and, though Centre for Chaplaincy in Education, is working with a huge diversity of partners, to grow education chaplaincy nationally. When not at work, he can be found with his family, or running and praying on the hills or coast with his spaniels.

Nicola Coupe

School adviser for Salisbury Diocesan Board of Education 

Nicola Coupe is a school adviser for Salisbury Diocesan Board of Education which she joined in 2018 from headship. She has over 30 years’ teaching and leadership experience in both the primary and secondary sectors, within both large and small schools, in Reading, Outer London and Wiltshire. Nicola currently oversees the SDBE’s work in Religious Education and Worldviews, Collective Worship and Children’s Spirituality. For RE she has led on the successful creation of the Hub Lead Practitioner RE meetings that provide teacher-to-teacher network opportunities across Wiltshire, Dorset and Poole.

Nicola has worked part time with The Church of England Education Office over a two-year period, to enable the ‘Rural Teaching Partnership’ and to support Network Leaders signed up to CEFEL’s Leadership Programme. In addition, she has led Courageous Advocacy networks for a number of dioceses.

Penny Rabiger

Blogger, Associate and Coach on the Centre for Race, Education and Decoloniality's Anti-Racist School Award & doctoral researcher at Leeds Beckett University

Penny Rabiger was a teacher for over a decade and later became one of the founding members of the team that set up The Key for School Leaders, where she was Director of Business Development. She has worked with a number of social enterprises in the education sector, and is a long-serving school governor. Penny is passionate about issues around education and equity and is one of the co-founders of the grassroots anti-racist charity The BAMEed Network. She is an Associate and Coach on the Centre for Race, Education and Decoloniality's Anti-Racist School Award and a doctoral researcher at Leeds Beckett University, exploring unlearning racism in a school context. Penny blogs at tenpencemore.wordpress.com.

Sean Harris

Doctoral researcher with Teesside University

Sean Harris is a part-time doctoral researcher with Teesside University investigating poverty in schools and how we tackle this in classrooms. He is also Trust Improvement Lead at Tees Valley Education Trust in the North East of England which is made up of five academies (primary and secondary).

He is a published author in the fields of education, community work and theology.

Sean enjoys learning about learning, sharpening his practice with the help of educators and thinking about the ‘so what?’ of research in relation to our classrooms. Sean is a visiting Fellow with Ambition Institute and has featured in a number of podcasts exploring the science of learning, educational disadvantage and leading curriculum.

You can find him Tweeting @SeanHarris_NE or Instagramming about poverty and schools via @ThatPovertyGuy.

Sedar Ferit

Former teacher and film-maker 

Serdar Ferit is an optimistic, creative and resilient leader and co-founder. He is a former teacher and film-maker who, along with his colleagues at Lyfta, is working to support teachers to nurture empathy, global citizenship and cultural capital through powerful immersive stories.

Serdar is passionate about our responsibility, as educators, to inspire and empower the next generation to elevate the societies and workplaces of the future.

Steven Berryman 

Director of Creativity, Music and Culture for The Charter Schools Educational Trust

Dr Steven Berryman is Director of Creativity, Music and Culture for The Charter Schools Educational Trust. Steven has considerable experience as a music educator, teaching and leading music in a variety of schools. For the University of Buckingham he is the Subject Lead for Music, and as a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London he contributes to the MA Education in Arts and Cultural Settings. For the academic year 2022 – 2023 Steven joined the team at the Royal College of Music to teach on the MEd programme. He has contributed widely to music education including creative projects with the Royal Opera House, London Philharmonic Orchestra and NMC Recordings. Steven is the current President of the Chartered College of Teaching, and the Vice-President of the National Society for Educators of Art and Design. He has sat on a variety of advisory panels, most recently for the National Plan for Music Education (published June 2022). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Chartered College of Teaching and a Chartered Teacher.

You can read more about Steven’s work at www.steven-berryman.com and on twitter @steven_berryman 

Toby Greany

Professor & Author

Toby is Professor of Education and Convener of the Centre for Research in Education Leadership and Management (CRELM) at the University of Nottingham. Toby's research is focused on how policy and practice interact to shape educational opportunities and outcomes, in particular across local systems and through networks, and the nature and role of leadership in these processes. His most recent book – Leading Educational Networks: Theory, Policy and Practice (Bloomsbury, 2022) – was co-authored with Dr Annelies Kamp, University of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand.