Educated Yorkshire . . . new conference aims to become a key event for school leaders

THE ORGANISER of a new conference for the education sector in Yorkshire says she hopes it encourages collaboration between schools to help drive up standards in the county.
Chrissie Slater, event director for the new Educated Yorkshire conference.Chrissie Slater, event director for the new Educated Yorkshire conference.
Chrissie Slater, event director for the new Educated Yorkshire conference.

Chrissie Slater says she wants the Educated Yorkshire conference, taking place next week, to become a key annual event for school leaders and policy makers in the region.

More than 350 head teachers, principals and school business managers are expected to attend on November 12.

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Ms Slater already organises a Manufactured Yorkshire conference and told The Yorkshire Post she believed there was a need for an event for people working in the education sector in the region. She said: “We want to be able to hold some great conferences within Yorkshire. Manufactured Yorkshire has been massively successful and through working with some clients in education I realised we could do an event like this.

“We want to not just showcase the work going on within education but to bring the education sector in Yorkshire together.”

One of the major challenges facing Yorkshire’s education sector is its school results. The region has consistently lagged behind the rest of the country in terms of the number of pupils achieving the expected standards in GCSEs, in key stage two standard assessment tests at the end of primary school and in the proportion of pupils who attend schools which the education watchdog Ofsted considers to be good or outstanding.

Ms Slater said she hoped the conference would allow people to find ways of collaborating to help raise standards in Yorkshire schools. But she said she also wanted it to be able to showcase outstanding work taking place in the county. The conference takes place next Thursday, at Bradford College’s David Hockney Building. It is free for senior school leaders to attend.

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Ms Slater added: “I think the main benefit of an event like this is that it can promote collaboration. It brings people together and strengthens the links between and across Yorkshire. I hope this conference will give us a solid foundation to build from in the future.”

One of the main talking points for the event will be ‘Raising Standards in Health’. Guest speakers will include Juliane Caillouette Noble, the school programme manager at the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation and Myles Bremner, director of the School Food Plan.

Another key topic will be the skills gaps and how they can be plugged. This session will feature a panel of experts discussing how schools and larger organisations can work together to create “work ready students”,

Other speakers at Educated Yorkshire include Simon Moorhouse, the director of F1 in Schools. He will be telling schools how to get involved in the national and international competition that asks teams of students to design, test, manufacture and then race a scaled down model Formula 1 style-car. The programme is run in more than 44 countries with regional and national finals events. Pupils aged between 15 and 18, who take part also earn a certificate.

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Educated Yorkshire has also just announced that LEGO Education will be among those delivering seminars. LEGO Education’s director Gareth Boldsworth will speak about “The role played by teachers in students lives”.

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