LLA Full Members receive a discount. Click here to see the list of our Members.
FRIDAY 31ST JANUARY 2025
8.45AM – 3.00PM
(Includes Light Lunch)
Carr Manor Community School, Secondary Phase, Leeds
LS17 5DJ
Sponsored by
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
host
Jamie Jones-Buchanan MBE
LLA Ambassador and Director of Culture, Diversity & Inclusivity, Leeds Rhinos
keynote speakers
host
Steve Chalke
MBE
Baptist minister, Founder of Oasis UK
Steve Chalke is a distinguished author, speaker, former UN Special Advisor on Human Trafficking, and Baptist minister.
In 1985, he founded the Oasis Trust, a leading UK charity dedicated to building inclusive local communities. Today, Oasis operates across multiple countries, providing housing, education, healthcare, and various community-building initiatives. In England, Oasis runs 54 schools and recently opened Oasis Restore, the UK’s first Secure School—a groundbreaking therapeutic alternative to youth prisons designed to support high-risk children and young people in the justice system.
Steve’s tireless work in social justice has earned him numerous honorary fellowships and an MBE. He continues to lead Oasis and remains a prominent voice on social issues. Steve is also a regular media commentator, and his latest book is called A Manifesto for Hope.
Anne Longfield CBE
Executive Chair and Founder Centre for Young Lives
Anne is a passionate champion for children, influencing and shaping the national debate and policy agenda for children and their families.
She has spent the last three decades working to improve the life chances of children, particularly the most vulnerable. She has recently founded and become Executive Chair of the Centre for Young Lives – a new, dynamic, innovative, independent think tank and delivery unit dedicated exclusively to improving the lives of children, young people, and families in the UK.
Anne previously established and chaired of the Commission on Young Lives, an independent commission to develop proposals for a new national system to prevent crisis in vulnerable young people and support them to succeed in life. The Commission put forward ambitious and eye-catching proposals to politicians and system leaders, several of which have been adopted. From March 2015 to February 2021, she was Children’s Commissioner for England. As Children’s Commissioner, Anne spent six years championing the rights and interests of children with those in power who make decisions about children’s lives, acting as children’s ‘eyes and ears’ in the corridors of power in Whitehall and Westminster.
She previously led a national children’s charity and has also worked on the delivery of the Sure Start programme in the No. 10 Strategy Unit. She spent many years campaigning for better childcare, often at a time when many saw the issue as obscure or niche. Anne is the Independent Chair of the NHS Children and Young People Learning Disability and Autism Board, a non-executive director of the Bradford Children and Family Trust, and board member of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership. She was previously a member of the Times Education Commission.
Anne regularly authors articles, and her new book Young Lives, Big Ambitions was published in April 2024. Anne has honorary doctorates from Newcastle Upon Tyne and Sheffield Hallam Universities.
host
Jamie Jones-Buchanan MBE
LLA Ambassador and Director of Culture, Diversity & Inclusivity, Leeds Rhinos
WORKSHOP LEADERS
Including:
Dr Ian
Thompson
Associate Professor of English Education, University of Oxford
Ian Thompson is an Associate Professor of Education at the Oxford University Department of Education.
Before joining Oxford, Ian taught English for sixteen years in state secondary schools. He was a PI on the ESRC funded project Excluded Lives: The Political Economies of School Exclusion and their Consequences (2019-24).
Ian is the lead editor of the journal Teaching Education. He publishes in the fields of cultural historical research, social justice in education, school exclusions, English education, and initial teacher education.
Jonny
Uttley
Jonny Uttley is the CEO of The Education Alliance Multi-Academy Trust (TEAL).
He has been in post since April 2018, having previously been head teacher at South Hunsley School. TEAL is a trust of twelve schools, in East Yorkshire, Hull, and York, serving over 7,000 students, and a SCITT which trains around 60 new entrants to the profession each year.
Before becoming a Head and CEO, Jonny was Deputy Headteacher at South Hunsley School, and prior to that was Assistant Headteacher at Huntington School in York. As a National Leader of Education, he has worked with schools in many different contexts and is committed to a school improvement approach that puts real ethical leadership at the heart of our system, so schools create cultures in which staff genuinely thrive.
He is also an elected member of the DfE Advisory Board for Yorkshire and the Humber, and a trustee at SHINE, an educational charity committed to reducing disadvantage in northern schools. In 2020 Putting Staff First: A Blueprint for Revitalising Our Schools was published, co-authored by Jonny and John Tomsett.
Maureen McKenna
Education Advisor and former Director of Education (Glasgow)
Debbie
Watters OBE
Co-director, Northern Ireland Alternatives
Debbie Watters has been involved in justice work, peace building, reconciliation, youth work and restorative practice for the past 35 years. She is a founding member of the first community-based restorative justice programme in Northern Ireland, of which she is currently the Co-Director.
Debbie has provided training, consultancy, presentations and lectures at a local, regional, and international level, and currently works extensively in Israel and Palestine. She is the former Vice Chair of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, having served as an independent member for 9 years.
She has worked widely during the past 30 years to empower women and grassroots communities to ensure their voices are at the centre of peacebuilding, conflict transformation, and post-conflict rebuilding. She currently serves as a Visiting Professor at Ulster University, is Chair of the Restorative Justice Council UK, and has recently been awarded an OBE for her services to peacebuilding and restorative justice.
Q&A with expert panel including:
Jermaine
Benjamin
Co-founder and Director, Boost Talent
Jermaine is proud to be a Governor at Carr Manor Community School and is a Special Advisor to the Leeds learning Alliance. Jermaine has particularly strong experience in leadership, coaching, building great cultures and teams, process improvement, operations, and delivering change.
Jermaine has been involved with leading and participating in community projects for over 15 years in Leeds, and is passionate about supporting, developing, and enabling our next generation to be the best versions of themselves, removing barriers and helping people to realise their full potential.
Griselda
Togobo MPhil, AC
She has spent more than a decade building communities and championing equality for women’s and girls’ economic empowerment. She works closely with organisations to close the gender gap in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) sectors.
She is a multi-faceted entrepreneur, engineer, and chartered accountant. Her experience as a black woman in the corporate world drives her to help progressive global companies create inclusive workplaces. She works directly with CEOs and business leaders to embed a culture of inclusion at the heart of their talent strategy.
She graduated from Cambridge University, Wolfson College, with an MPhil in Industrial Systems, Manufacture and Management. Before becoming an entrepreneur, she was a management consultant at Deloitte LLP.
Griselda is also CEO of wearenovi.com, a women-in-business and leadership community designed to accelerate women’s success and redefine leadership. In response to the high rate of education exclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa, Griselda has launched Advancing Futures, a non-profit focused on addressing the educational needs of children in low-income communities in Ghana by supporting women’s economic empowerment.
Griselda recently created and took to market a new planning tool, the Goal Achiever Planner, designed to help high achievers plan their days with a holistic focus on mindful productivity, wellbeing, and mental health, while integrating work and family life effectively.
Griselda serves on the Board of The National School of Contemporary Dance and the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Academic Advisory Group. In addition, she is an Ambassador for the Open University, Black Students Support Fund, a Fellow at the Girls’ Schools Association (GSA), an Enterprise Ambassador at Leeds University, and a Leader in Residence at Lancaster University. Griselda lives in West Yorkshire with her husband, Michael, their son, Makavo, and daughter Elinam.
