Kirklees Council – Our Kirklees Futures Learning Summit

Adele Bates

Adele is a Behaviour & Education specialist who helps school leaders, classroom teachers, homeschooling carers, and parents support pupils with behavioural needs and SEMH to thrive with their education. Adele works with teachers, school leaders and educators who are struggling to engage pupils with challenging behaviour, who want to create inclusive classrooms where learning is the focus. Adele’s vision is for education is one in which all differences are included and welcomed; education is flexible, relevant and leads towards positive social change.

Elly Chapple

Elly is a speaker on Hope, Inclusion, Disability/SEND and Leadership. She graduated with honours in Human Resource Management and the Psychology of Human Communication. She has always been fascinated with human communication and behaviour, both verbal and non-verbal. She spent her early career working in businesses, managing and developing strategy for solutions focused approaches and building and maintaining relationships with clients. Elly has a passion and interest in equality and inclusion for all and her drive is to ensure that everyone has a seat at the table. In 2014 when her eldest daughter lost her vision through misunderstanding of her disability, Elly sold her business to come home and begin another journey. She recently did her TEDx at Norwich sharing their journey to #flipthenarrative. Over the past five years Elly has developed a unique approach (thanks to her greatest teacher – her phenomenal eldest daughter), to rebuild her trust in the world and work towards healing her trauma. Elly employs and manages an extraordinary ‘A Team’ of Intervenors and an ‘out of the box’ approach for education. Currently writing Ella’s book about their journey and learning daily from colleagues in the fields of SEND, trauma, education, health and social care.

Martin Illingworth

Martin was a practising teacher with a depth of experience and wisdom in the teaching of English and literacy, a keen eye for the absurdities of government policies, a professional anger at the resulting waste of human potential and a trenchant Northern wit that made him such an engaging and inspiring speaker. Now, as a Senior Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University’s School of Education, as well as a consultant for The National Association for the Teaching of English, Martin is able to share his common-sense approaches to education generally and literacy and English specifically, with a wider audience but still with an acute sense of what is wrong with education and schools and, importantly, what we can all do about it. It is a call to action best summed up in the title of his first book for the Independent Thinking Press, Think Before You Teach.

Michael Wardle

Michael is a qualified teacher and has held senior positions in schools, working in both primary and secondary settings. He has experience working as a national leader of education and as headteacher of a large 11–18 school. Previously, he was senior leader in a federation of 3 schools (primary, secondary and special). Michael has a Doctorate in Education. He has particular experience in managing curriculum development and implementing quality assurance systems. Michael has a wide range of inspection experience and leads ITE, specialist settings and area SEND inspections, in addition to all types of school inspections. Michael has particular experience in managing curriculum development and implementing quality assurance systems. He has also held the Ofsted national role as subject lead for languages.

Mikey Markham

With his gift for incredibly moving and honest poetry, his natural enthusiasm and his passion to help young people aim so much higher, Mikey Markham – AKA the performance poet Rhythmical Mike – is one such impressive young man. After all, sometimes it takes a dyslexic school failure with a gift for capturing the spirit of life in his words, and then turning those words into feelings, to help us all realise how we can all raise our game in the world of education. When Mikey shares his poems with an audience, whether it is adults or children, he both transfixes and transforms the room. It is something that he not only achieves through the cleverness of his rhymes and his words, but through the topic he covers – often gritty, relevant, real-life scenarios of people trying to fit in but not quite making it, of people who school and wider society may have rejected but who, in turn, have not yet fully rejected society. With a growing reputation that includes sharing a stage with the likes of Russell Brand, Rizzle Kicks, Hollie McNish and Akala, Mikey now runs poetry workshops and recitals for schools, youth centres, charities, rehabilitation organisations, universities, and sports clubs. Wherever he speaks, he never fails to disarm his audience with his natural charm, passion and compassion, before hitting them squarely between the eyes with the power of his words and the stories he tells.

Musharaf "Mushy" Asghar

Mushy is a proud motivational speaker. However, his story hasn’t always been sunshine and rainbows. At the age of five, Mushy suffered an asthma attack which resulted in himself waking up in a hospital. After waking up, Mushy found it tremendously difficult to get his words out. As days passed by, Mushy’s inability to speak became worrying. Mushy ended up in the doctor’s surgery and this moment changed his life. Mushy was told he would never be able to speak ever again and realised that life would be even more difficult. After suffering for many years of bullying, and just looking for help, Mushy’s English teacher, Mr Burton used an unusual technique to help Mushy get his words out. After defying all the odds, Mushy overcome his stammer in a heartfelt speech to all his students and particularly thanking Mr Burton for the love and support he gave.