Moderation Panel

Panel Member
Ava currently works as an independent School Improvement Advisor and was a Headteacher for 22 years before she took semi-retirement in December 2017.
During her years as Headteacher, she led her main school from Special Measures to Ofsted Outstanding and for her last 4 years of Headship was executive Headteacher, while continuing to be the substantive Headteacher of the school she was Headteacher of for 22 years. She took on the Headship of a local school in Special Measures which rapidly became judged as a good school by Ofsted.
Ava was a National Leader of Education until her semi-retirement. During this 10-year period she supported many schools in challenging circumstances.
Ava was part of the DFE working party who wrote the Teachers ‘Standards and has been a judge for the National Teaching Awards for the last 13 years.

Corrienne Peasgood is President of the Association of Colleges, the national voice for England’s colleges. Corrienne took up the role in October 2022 after more than 25 years in Further Education.
Corrienne trained as a plumber after leaving school at 16 and by the age of 21, she had completed an apprenticeship and joined her family business in plumbing and heating. In 1996, the opportunity came to join City College Norwich as a sessional plumbing lecturer and over the next 15 years Corrienne moved on to become a full-time lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Director, Vice Principal, and Deputy Principal. Thus, gaining insights into the many different departments at the college. Corrienne then served as CEO and Principal at City College Norwich for a decade, before retiring in July 2022.
Corrienne was appointed an OBE in 2020 and was Vice Chair of Norfolk’s Children and Young People’s Strategic Alliance and FE Board member of the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership (NALEP). Corrienne is Chair of the NALEP Agri-Food Industry Council.

Director of Policy, Association of School and College Leaders

After an early career in educational publishing, Julie has held a number of senior roles in education policy, including as Director of UK Policy and Thought Leadership at Pearson, and Primary and Governance Specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL).

Julie became Director of Policy at ASCL in 2017. In this role, she leads the organisation’s engagement with government and other stakeholders, and coordinates the work of a team of policy specialists. She speaks and writes regularly in the media, at conferences and on panels on a wide range of issues, and is the author of ASCL’s Blueprint for a Fairer Education System.

Julie is also a trustee of a large multi-academy trust in Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. She was previously a board member of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust, a not-for-profit company which built on and embedded the work of the long-running independent inquiry into primary education.

Nicole Reid is the Executive Principal of four high achieving local primary schools in Hackney, London.

Moving from Jamaica in her early twenties, Nicole has over twenty years of experience in education, working her way from class teacher to Executive Principal, spending some time at every rung of the ladder. Her passion for education as a life changing force may have been forged in Jamaica but Nicole has spent her career using it as a personal motivation to make successes out of the local schools she is responsible for, and which serve diverse communities with high proportions of disadvantaged pupils.

As well as her main Executive role she is a Local education Lead and has been coach and mentor for Heads and SLT teams within and outside of the Federation she runs. Much of her work has been involved with transforming schools identified by local and national government. She sits on the local authority Executive Headteacher Advisory Board, a vital bridge between strategic policy makers, schools and families.

With a particular passion for early language and reading for pleasure, Nicole is also the Strategic Lead for one of the thirty two English Hubs, financed by the DfE, supporting schools in the South East of England.

At the heart of Nicole’s career is the building of excellence in local education for diverse communities with a particular focus on pupils who have been impacted by poverty. Her uncompromising, hands on approach allied to a willingness to make hard decisions and a determination to hold people to account including herself and close colleagues has earnt her respect from many.

Panel member 

Steven Baker is the CEO of The People’s Learning Trust. He has led four schools to outstanding Ofsted judgements across a range of sectors and is a former Ofsted Inspector. In 2019, Steven was made a Founding Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching for his ‘significant and sustained’ impact on teaching and he has previously worked with the Ministry of Justice in youth and adult establishments nationwide as they focus their efforts on developing a culture of rehabilitation.

The schools he has led have won a range of national awards for their compassionate, trauma-informed approach and the Department for Education cited them as an example of best practice in mental health due to their focus on supporting student and staff well-being. Steven co-authored a critically acclaimed book about this approach (A School Without Sanctions, Bloomsbury) which was published in October 2020. He sits on the Advisory Board for the Centre for Educational Leadership at Liverpool John Moores University, the Advisory Board for the think tank Learnus and the Mental Health Stakeholder Forum for the Crown Prosecution Service. Steven is also a lead judge for the Pearson National Teaching Awards.

In addition to his work in education, Steven helped develop a ground-breaking place-based change project with the aim of tackling deprivation, and improving outcomes for all, across an entire community (www.cradle2career.org.uk). The outcomes achieved by the project to date have been outstanding and the Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor has committed to rolling it out across all Local Authorities in the region.

A former United Nations war crimes investigator, Steven received the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service as a member of the Remembering Srebrenica Northwest Board and was awarded an OBE in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, in recognition of his services to education and tackling hatred.

Podcast:

Steve is a transformative figure in education and a passionate advocate for non-punitive, compassionate approaches to behaviour management. You can hear Steve’s innovative methods for de-escalation and emotional intelligence, both in children and adults in this podcast.

Book:

A School Without Sanctions available here

Panel Member 

Sufian Sadiq is the Director of Talent & Teaching School at Chiltern Learning Trust, with responsibility for overseeing four SCITT provisions, two Teaching School Hub areas in the East of England, as well as Behaviour and Attendance Hubs. Chiltern Teaching School is one of the largest providers of CPD to the sector nationally. He is a passionate activist within the educational landscape around race, equity and inclusion. He is a serving Ofsted Inspector.

Sufian is a proud Fellow and Board Member of the Chartered College of Teaching, as well as a Fellow for the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors. He plays an active role in numerous charitable organisations as a Trustee and also holds key governance roles within educational organisations.