David Hopkins is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Education, University of London, where until recently, he held the inaugural HSBC iNet Chair in International Leadership. He holds visiting professorships at the Catholic University of Santiago, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Universities of Edinburgh, Melbourne and Wales and consults internationally on school reform.

Between 2002 and 2005 he served three Secretaries of State as the Chief Adviser on School Standards at the Department for Education and Skills. Previously, he was Chair of the Leicester City Partnership Board and Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Nottingham. Before that he was a Tutor at the University of Cambridge, Institute of Education, a Secondary School teacher and Outward Bound Instructor.

He is the author of over thirty books on educational issues. His most recent publications are “Every School a Great School”, “Models of Learning - Tools for Teaching” and “A Teacher’s Guide to Classroom Research”. He was a member of the team that won the contract for the National College for School Leadership, and he is a founding member of the College’s Governing Council and was Chair of its first Think Tank. He was consultant to the OECD on policy formation, school improvement and teacher quality and to some twenty Ministries of Education worldwide on these themes.

David is passionately committed to improving the quality of education for all, and his work is characterised by an integration of policy, research, and practice. This reflects the variety of roles he has held in education as a teacher, professor, change agent, senior policy maker and international consultant. His professional interests are in the areas of learning and adventure, teacher and school development, leadership, educational change and policy implementation. David is also an International Mountain Guide who still climbs regularly in the Alps and Himalayas.

For the last 10 years David has led large-scale programmes supporting leadership development, system leadership approaches and the implementation of collaborative practice models in education. Currently a Partner at the Innovation Unit, he has worked on a number of its national programmes. He was lead consultant for the Next Practice in System Leadership programme. Working with the National College for School Leadership (NCSL), this work introduced new approaches to leadership and governance for school collaboratives, multi-service provision and locality working. He is currently lead consultant on the IU/Paul Hamlyn Foundation Learning Futures programme and a member of the team for the Global Education Leaders programme. He is also working in the team supporting Knowsley Local Authority to create an Innovation Laboratory and helping New York to establish its Innovation Zone.

In 2000, he was appointed as NCSL's first Director of Research and School Improvement. In that role he oversaw the development of New Visions, now the national program for England's annual cohort of 4,000 new Head Teachers. In 2002 he became the Director of NCSL's Networked Learning Group. Its best known programme involved the support of 134 Networked Learning Communities (1,550 schools) across England over a five year period. It also promoted innovation in leadership development design, collaborative leadership approaches, network leadership, and models of brokerage and capacity-building across and between Local Authorities.
David has taught on Leadership Masters programmes at the Universities of Cambridge and Nottingham, and on Cambridge's International MPhil programme in Educational Reform and Teacher Development. He has published widely on a range of themes - leadership, school improvement, innovation, enquiry, student voice and Networked Learning Communities - and has supported school and system improvement programmes both in the UK and internationally.
For 14 years, until 2000, he was Head Teacher of Sharnbrook Upper School and Community College, at that time one of the country's most innovative and successful schools. David began teaching in 1971.

Denis holds qualifications from London, Oxford and South Bank Universities and has held appointments at the Universities of London where he is now a Visiting Professorial Fellow, Manchester where he is a Senior Research Fellow and Cambridge where he was Lecturer in Inclusion. Denis is a Senior Associate of the Innovation Unit.

Since 1998, Denis’s work has included senior local government roles, amongst them ‘Children’s Services Change Adviser’ to the Chief Executive in Tower Hamlets. He has worked for Ofsted, most recently on its ‘well being’ criteria and has led for the Audit Commission on a number of inspections. He has worked for UNICEF in Turkish prisons and for the British Council in Malawi’s schools. That work, alongside contracts with DCSF, SSAT, IDeA, TDA, YST and other national acronyms have allowed him to work with some terrific adults and young people.

After teaching in a London secondary school in the early 1970s Denis moved to work with some of the city’s more difficult pupils. He was head of a school for ‘maladjusted’ pupils then director of a multi-disciplinary guidance centre. In 1982 he joined the Inner London inspectorate service. Denis held posts in Hertfordshire from 1989 to 1998, including secondment to the Chief Executive’s office for a review all of the Council’s services which led to the then novel integration of the Education Department and Children’s Social Services

Denis has worked and written extensively for the National College for School Leadership and Children’s Services. He has recently published work describing school leadership associated with white working class achievement, school leadership creating Public Value and newly emerging models of school leadership.

He is interested in the development of personal and institutional networks which nurture community participation and inter-agency activity around the lives of children. He believes this is one contribution to raising the ambition and achievement of young people, their families and the people who work with them, especially in economically poor neighbourhoods.

Professor John Seddon is an occupational psychologist, researcher, management thinker and leading authority on change in organisations. Author of the best-selling “I Want you to Cheat: the unreasonable guide to service and quality in organisations”. He is often asked to write for the broadsheet press and management magazines. He has spoken and lectured at seminars, conferences, universities and schools of management around the world. John has a reputation for being controversial and challenging, but informed.

John is credited with translating the principles behind the Toyota Production System (TPS) for service organisations. The TPS is not a ‘tools’ thing, he says, it is a ‘change the system’ thing and that is a challenge to convention. John has been a critic of management conventions, pointing out many practical and theoretical flaws,
and argues that the way we think about management needs to change. In recent years John has been an ardent critic of public sector reform. He is as vociferous in arguing there is a better way to design and manage work.

John is a visiting professor at Cardiff and Derby Universities, a visiting fellow at Hull University Business School and Managing Director of Vanguard Consulting. He is author of “Systems Thinking in the Public Sector”, Triarchy Press, 2008.

Professor Mick Waters currently works with the schools in the Black Country Challenge, raising standards in the West Midlands. He also works with schools in Sheffield on innovative approaches to learning and on several other initiatives. He is president of the Curriculum Foundation, which seeks to promote a voice for the power and potential of the whole curriculum. He is chair of 360 People, a company working to encourage young people to be involved in assessing their progress in the development of skills for adult life and employment. Mick is a patron of Heads, Teachers and Industry (HTI), which seeks ways to build reciprocal understanding between sectors, and a Trustee of the Children’s University which offers a range of learning opportunities beyond the school environment.

Previously, he worked at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority as Director of Curriculum and before joining QCA, Mick was Chief Education Officer for the City of Manchester. Key agendas for him there included the development of joint children’s services, the 14-19 strategy, the employment and skills dimension and configuring all this around Building Schools for the Future. Before that he worked in Birmingham Local Education Authority where he drove forward a school improvement agenda. Mick has experience of headship in two schools and of working in teacher training. He was also part of an Education Development Unit which worked on a contract basis with LEAs and other agencies across the UK and worldwide.

Mick believes in being close to teachers, children and schools, and is often to be found in the classroom working with children. He has written books on the curriculum, teaching and learning, and management, as well as making presentations at numerous national and international conferences. He is passionate about the role of education in improving life chances for pupils. He enjoys asking adults to look at learning through the eyes of a pupil.

Since the summer of 2009 Laurie has been working as an independent consultant in the area of learning and technology futures; working with a range of public, private and not for profit organisations. He has worked for multinational IT corporations, the main Scottish teachers’ trade union, small start-up companies and national public sector organisations.

Laurie does a little bit of public speaking but prefers the role of trusted adviser working on long-term projects and programmes. He likes to work with his clients to put any advice he offers into practice by building capacity and supporting change – rather than writing long-winded reports destined to gather dust with recommendations that will never be implemented.

Apart from ongoing assignments Laurie’s current portfolio includes:

• Visiting Professor of Learning and Technology at the University of Abertay Dundee – working within the Institute for Media, Arts and Computer Games
• Associate Director at Futurelab

Until June 2009 he was Director of Learning and Technology at Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) and led the Glow national schools intranet project. At LTS he had a wide ranging remit apart from Glow including the LTS Online Service, Scottish Learning Festival and Corporate ICT support to LTS staff. Before LTS he was with Dundee City Council in the role of ICT adviser.

He joined LTS in June 2001 as Head of Future Learning and Teaching and held the posts of Head of ICT Development, Director of ICT Development and Director of ICT before a reorganisation left him with the title Director of Learning and Technology.

Laurie has also had experience as an elected member of Dundee District Council, serving as Convener of Community Services and Deputy Convener of Finance.

Following his masters degree he was invited to become an honorary fellow and part-time lecturer teaching the postgraduate MSc/MEd at the University of Edinburgh.

Before taking up her current post with Aberdeen City Council in 2009 Annette worked with HM Inspectorate of Education(HMIE). She joined HMIE as an Inspector in January 2001 and became a Chief Inspector in 2005, with responsibility for the inspection of education, community learning and development, and psychological services across Scotland. Her directorate is also responsible for following through on school inspection and school improvement.

Before joining HMIE, she was a service manager for quality assurance in Stirling Council's children's services. She has also worked as a senior manager in the Higher Still national development programme and was involved in the National Curriculum assessment programme from 1996-99.

Prior to that Mrs Bruton worked in the field of learning support and special needs in the former Lothian Regional Council, dealing with vulnerable children and their families. She began her career as a geography and economics teacher in Dundee.