Rachel Ball - The Scaffolding Effect 

Rachel Ball is Coaching Development Lead at Steplab and a former senior leader in charge of Teaching and Learning and CPD, based in the North West.

An SLE and passionate History teacher with over 20 years of experience, Rachel is also a co-author of the upcoming book The Scaffolding Effect, published as part of the Inner Drive Teacher CPD series, due to be released in early Summer.

In her session, Rachel covered adaptive teaching and scaffolding strategies and how to make them work in the classroom without creating additional workload.

Amjad Ali - SEND in Schools

Amjad Ali (@TeachLeadAAli) is a teacher, trainer, TEDx speaker and Senior Leader. He currently works four days a week in a startup secondary school and offers CPD/INSET on his other day. Amjad has spent his teaching career working in challenging, diverse schools.

He is a qualified SENDCO and was also trained as an Advanced Skills Teacher in Teaching and Learning. He is 'the chalkface' teacher, who shares 'what works' in an engaging and easy-to-understand format.

In his keynote he equiped us all with low-effort, high-impact ideas to use instead of rather than in addition to everyday classroom practice. He answered questions such as: What does adaptive teaching really mean? Is it even possible? 

Kate Jones - Retrieval Practice

Kate Jones is Senior Associate for Teaching and Learning at Evidence Based Education. She is an experienced teacher, leader, bestselling author, blogger and award-winning international speaker. Kate is the author of nine books, including a bestselling series on retrieval practice, and she was the editor of the researchEd Guide to Cognitive Science (2023).

Kate writes extensively about education on her website and in various educational magazines, including Teach Middle East Magazine and the TES and is also the founder of The Love To Teach Podcast. You can connect with Kate on social media @KateJones_Teach.

In her session Kate answered questions such as: How can retrieval practice be effectively embedded across the curriculum? How can teachers and learners harness the benefits of retrieval practice, inside and outside the classroom?

Sam Crome - Building Teacher Belonging and Well-being

Sam is a Deputy Headteacher at St Peter's Catholic School, Director of Education at Xavier, and author from Surrey, UK. He is passionate about understanding how teams truly thrive, so that we can create amazing workplaces for our staff and students.

In his session, Sam addressed teacher retention and explored the research behind belonging and wellbeing to shed light on what really works for staff wellbeing. He shared practical strategies to build schools that help all teachers thrive for the long term.