Keynote: Professor Dame Lesley Regan DBE
Professor Dame Lesley Regan DBE is a Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at Imperial College London and Consultant at St Mary’s Hospital in London. She is also Secretary General of FIGO, a member of the NHS Assembly and Chair of the Charity Wellbeing of Women.
She was the 30th President of Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (2016-2019) and only the second woman to be elected to this position and the first in 64 years. During her tenure as PRCOG she co-chaired the National Women’s Health Task Force with Jackie Doyle-Price MP (then Health Minister) and authored “Better for Women”, a hard hitting RCOG report which promotes a life-course approach to the delivery of women’s health services.
Having graduated from the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London in 1980, Professor Regan pursued her training at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, where she first became enthused by clinical and laboratory research, completing her MD on miscarriage. She went on to set up the world’s largest recurrent miscarriage clinic at St Mary’s Hospital in London.
In 2015 she received a Doctorate of Science from University College London for her contribution to women’s health. In 2020 whe was awarded a DBE for her services to women’s health in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List.
Dr Gavin Alexander
Dr Gavin Alexander is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Christ’s College, where he directs studies in English. He specialises in sixteenth and seventeenth-century English literature and criticism, and is the author of numerous books and articles on literary and musicological topics. In 2008 he was awarded a Pilkington Prize by the University of Cambridge for excellence in teaching. He is a regular contributor to subject residentials and CPD Subject Days for the PTI.
Nick Brook
Nick Brook has been Deputy General Secretary of NAHT since September 2016. Prior to this, he ran his own successful education consultancy. Having started his career as a primary teacher Nick has over twenty five years’ experience of public sector delivery in central government, local government and schools. For ten years, as a Senior Civil Servant, he shaped policy and transformed delivery in some of the most high profile, high priority areas in Government, including the Home Office – where he led the Anti-Social Behaviour and Crime Prevention Unit; the Training and Development Agency for Schools – as Director of School Workforce Remodelling and at Ofsted, leading thematic and subject inspection and external communications. As Deputy General Secretary at NAHT, Nick leads the policy & research, press & media and organising & campaigns teams.
Professor Emily Perry
Professor Emily Perry is Deputy Head of the Centre for Development and Research in Education, part of Sheffield Institute of Education at Sheffield Hallam University. She works in local, national and international contexts to manage, develop and quality assure teacher professional development programmes, and her research interests focus around professional development, especially for science teachers, including its leadership, facilitation and quality. Emily’s current projects include the Wellcome CPD Challenge, Wipro Teacher Fellows and Mentors programme, and a pilot programme to design and test a system of quality assurance of teacher professional development, working in partnership with the Chartered College of Teaching and the Teacher Development Trust.
Professor Anu Ojha OBE
Professor Anu Ojha OBE is Director of the UK’s National Space Academy programme and a Director of the National Space Centre – the UK’s largest visitor centre for space science and astronomy. He co-led the development of the National Higher Apprenticeship programme for the Space Sector and is the lead for skills/training for the ongoing UK-China programme of collaboration in Space Science and Technology.
Professor Lee Elliot Major OBE
Professor Lee Elliot Major OBE is Britain’s first Professor of Social Mobility. Appointed by the University of Exeter to be a global leader in the field, his work is dedicated to improving the prospects of disadvantaged young people. Lee was awarded an OBE in this year’s Queen’s Honours for services to social mobility. He was formerly Chief Executive of the Sutton Trust the UK’s leading social mobility foundation. Lee is a founding trustee of the Education Endowment Foundation which has carried out 100s of major research trials in England’s schools. He is a senior visiting fellow at the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute and an Honorary Professor at the UCL Institute of Education. He commissioned and co-authored the Sutton Trust-EEF toolkit, a guide used by 100,000s of school leaders and replicated across the world. He has served on several Government advisory bodies and presented several times to the House of Commons Education Select Committee.
Geoff Barton
Geoff Barton studied English and Linguistics at the University of Lancaster, then trained to teach at Leicester University. From 2002 to 2017 he was headteacher of King Edward VI School, Bury St Edmunds, a comprehensive school of 1650 students. He is a Founding Fellow of the English Association and writes for a range of newspapers and journals. He has worked with various organisations, including the Department for Education, on leadership and literacy. Geoff was a longstanding member of ASCL Council, former chair of its Pedagogy Committee, is Patron of the English and Media Centre, and a ‘Leading Thinker’ for the National Education Trust. He became General Secretary of ASCL in April 2017.