Monday 8th January saw our first Foundation wide online conference as a group of 14 schools. Following a theme of ‘Creating a Culture of Collaboration’, the conference provided opportunities for staff from across the Foundation to engage with a wide range of professional development opportunities. There were over 90 sessions delivered by more than 50 different presenters, including sessions delivered by our Foundation Leaders of Education with a subject specific focus.
A highlight was the morning keynote from the inspirational Rev Steve Chalke, Founder of Oasis UK, on the value of working together. This was followed by workshops and presentations on a vast range of topics delivered by experts including Professor Rob Coe on feedback to support students’ learning, Fiona Aubrey Smith on the impact of technology in the classroom, Marcus Shepherd’s discussion on the importance of racial diversity in leadership and Sam Ramsey’s valuable insights around autism in girls.
Special thanks must go to Lee Tallent, Head of Educational Development, for his relentless pursuit of presenters and both the IT and Communications teams for ensuring that the event ran smoothly. Thank you must also go to all the CPD leads within each school who ensured that staff had everything they needed to access the sessions and all those wonderful colleagues who agreed to host our external speaker sessions. Without this support an event like this would not be possible. Initial feedback has been positive; with both the range of options and engagement of presenters and keynote scoring highly on the evaluation, with an average score of 3.4 out of 4 for enjoyment, usefulness, and quality of presenters. Next steps are collating the recorded videos into a resource library for all schools to access on demand.
Thank you for being part of our first Foundation wide conference and we hope that everyone found the event useful.
Fiona Aubrey Smith - Founder of PedTech and co-author of the book From EdTech to PedTech
Professor Robert Coe - Director of Research Development at Evidence Based Education
Marcus Shepherd - Education Director at E-ACT Academy Trust
Sam Ramsey - Manager and Senior trainer at The Girl with the Curly Hair Project
