PHAB School Leaders Conference 2024

PHAB School Leaders Conference March 2024

We are excited to invite Headteachers, Deputy Headteachers, Assistant Heads, and all leaders in primary and nursery settings to our annual residential School Leaders conference on Thursday 14^th March and Friday 15^th March 2024.

Thursday 14^th March (Day 1)- Morning: Building Culture in Schools

Day 1 of the conference will open with a focus on building culture in schools, effective professional development, and recruitment and retention of staff. The speakers for the morning session are:

John Tomsett

John Tomsett is a nationally renowned school leader who supports schools in improving the quality of teaching and learning. With 33 years of teaching experience, including 18 years as a Headteacher at Huntington School in York, one of the country's leading Research Schools, he offers consultancy on school leadership, teaching and learning, and curriculum development. His books include 'Putting Staff First', 'This Much I Know About Mind Over Matter - Improving Mental Health In Our Schools', and 'Huh', which he co-wrote with Mary Myatt.

Lekha Sharma

Lekha Sharma is a School Improvement Lead for the Avanti Schools Trust, specialising in curriculum and assessment. With over ten years of experience teaching and leading in schools in various contexts, she is currently studying Learning and Teaching at the University of Oxford. Lekha is the author of 'Building Culture - A Handbook to Harnessing Human Nature to Create Strong School Teams', which explores school culture and how it can improve pupil outcomes. Her presentation will focus on the practical application of theoretical knowledge in curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy. She will also delve into areas of psychology that can enhance the leadership of teachers and the building of school cultures.

Dr Kulvarn Atwal

Author of ‘The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community’, Dr. Kulvarn Atwal completed his PGCE at the University of East London in 1999 and has worked in four East London schools. For the past nine years he has been Headteacher at Highlands Primary School and is currently also Headteacher at Uphall Primary School. Dr Kulvarn Atwal will draw from workplace learning theories and explore how to develop an expansive learning environment that enables a sense of belonging, wellbeing and inclusion for all.

Thursday 14^th March (Day 1)- Afternoon

Angie Belcher- Stand-up Comedy Masterclass

Angie Belcher is a facilitator, actor, writer, and stand-up comedian with over 15 years of experience in creating and presenting shows. She has worked with various clients, including national NGO's and London's Design Agency D and AD. Angie is an award-winning trainer and professional coach, teaching presentation skills and motivational speaking. In this masterclass, she will guide participants in writing and performing their first piece of stand-up comedy.

Friday 15th March (Day 2)- Developing a Diverse Curriculum and Creating an Inclusive Environment for Neurodiverse Learners

Continuing on our theme from last year day two will explore in more detail how schools can practically create an inclusive environment for neuro-diverse learners. The speakers for this session are:

Catrina Lowri

Catrina Lowri is the founder of Neuroteachers (www.neuroteachers.com) and a neurodivergent teacher, trainer and coach. As well as having 22 years’ experience of working in education, she also speaks as a dyslexic and bipolar woman, who had her own unique journey through the education system.

Celebrating Neurodiversity

In Catrina's session she will talk about celebrating neurodiversity and what it means in your setting. This will include:

●      What is neurodiversity?

●      How divergent is neurodivergent?

●      Co-occuring conditions and the fruit salad analogy

●      Ages and stages

●      Intersectionality

●      How to support this in setting

●      What this means for your ‘learner in mind’

●      What this means for your setting

●       Celebrating ND

 Rachna Joshi

Rachna is a teacher and consultant. She works with under-threes, Nursery and Reception children, and holds an MA in Early Childhood Studies.

Rachna writes and speaks at events sharing experience and knowledge, empowering practitioners and provoking questions to cause thought to routine practice. She supports schools by guiding educators to implement inspiring practice that reflects their classes. She works as a freelance consultant and is endorsed by the Froebel Trust as a travelling tutor.

A passionate advocate for rough and tumble play, children’s identity and self-awareness and metacognition in young children, Rachna combines theory and practice to promote the holistic development of the children she works with and their communities.

In Rachna's session she will explore:

●      How children develop identities

●      How we might begin to address inequalities within our classroom settings

Drawing from classroom experiences, we will look at different scenarios and discuss how educators can enable themselves and young learners with ideas, language and strategies to work together to tackle racism and injustice.

Dr Rob Power

Dr Rob Power is an award-winning teacher, educational consultant and cultural historian specialising in global history and indigenous knowledge.

Rob has worked extensively with schools, both in the UK and internationally, to support curriculum reform and development. An active researcher and visiting lecturer, Rob’s work primarily seeks to support schools in creating Totally Inclusive learning communities through the exploration and application of global teaching methodologies and integration of indigenous knowing into the curriculum. Understanding not just ‘what we learn’ but ‘why we learn it’ and ‘how we learn it’ forms the basis of the Global Curriculum Project, an initiative which seeks to bring together teachers, students and educationalists to research, produce and share knowledge on curriculum development, diversity and community change.

The pathway to diversifying your curriculum begins by critically appraising what we expect our students to learn and why they should be learning it. But creating a global curriculum shouldn’t just involve diversifying reading lists or integrating non-Western case studies into existing work schemes. Questioning what we teach, why we teach it and how we teach is an important part of this process too. This session will explore possibilities for creating a truly global curriculum in our schools, embracing global teaching methodologies in our classrooms and establishing the basis for change that will impact positively on our school communities.

We will explore:

·       Disciplinary knowledge and opportunity

·       Interdisciplinarity in our curriculum

·       A Local to Global approach to knowledge building

·       Indigenous Knowledge and Global Teaching Methodologies

Talking Leaders

The conference also provides an opportunity to network with and support colleagues. We invite schools to share their best practices and insights by delivering short presentations about stories from their settings. Throughout the conference, we will schedule 15-minute sessions for these presentations. If you or one of your leaders would like to lead one of these sessions on something inspiring and impactful in your setting, please let us know.