SNE Event

Ziauddin Yousafzai

Education Activist & Co Founder, Malala Fund

Ziauddin Yousafzai is an educator, human rights campaigner and social activist. He hails from Pakistan's Swat Valley where, at great personal risk among grave political violence, he peacefully resisted the Taliban's efforts to shut down schools and kept his own school open. He also inspired his daughter, Malala Yousafzai, to raise her voice to promote the rights of children to an education. Ziauddin is the co-founder and serves as the Chairman of the Board for the Malala Fund.
He also serves as the United Nations Special Advisor on Global Education and also the educational attaché to the Pakistani Consulate in Birmingham, UK.

The 'real' David Cameron

Presenter, Trainer, Consultant in Education & Children's Services

David is a presenter/speaker, trainer, mentor, coach and adviser. He has delivered at conferences at home and abroad, including TEDx Buenos Aires, Northern Rocks and in schools throughout the UK and internationally, alongside some of the most influential people and the best practitioners in the world of education and training.

David wants to make a difference and believes that he can!

The difference that he wants to make is ensuring that all young people have an education that brings richness to their lives. He wants them to be able to think for themselves and to be committed to building a better world than the one that they are inheriting. David thinks that he can do this by helping those working with them to recognise their strengths and to find the energy to build on them.

He wants to offer support, perspective, analysis, approaches and tools so that aspirations become ambitions and ambitions become realities, all to the beat of some banging tunes, heartrending videos and a lot of laughter!

Margaret Mulholland

SEND and Inclusion Specialist

Margaret Mulholland is the SEND & Inclusion Policy Specialist for the Association of School and College Leaders. She has extensive experience as a teacher and leader across mainstream and special and is a leading advocate for the role schools play in improving understanding of inclusive leadership and teaching.

She recently completed a two year national research project for the EEF as Project Director for Whole School SEND. Margaret is also an Honorary Norham Fellow at Oxford University and non-executive Director at the Centre for Education and Youth (CfEY). She writes a monthly column for TES.

Dan Jackson

Author & Director of Policy and Stakeholder Affairs for NHS North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board

Dan is the author of The Northumbrians: North East England and its People, A New History, which was a Sunday Times 'Book of the Year' in 2019. 

He was educated at Astley High School in Seaton Delaval and holds a PhD in history from Northumbria University. He has written for the New Statesman, History Today and Unherd, and has appeared as an expert guest on the BBC’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, Radio 4’s ‘Start the Week’ and 'The Rest is History' podcast. 

After an 18-year career in local public services he is now a director in the North East regional NHS and was recently appointed as a trustee and vice-chair of Beamish Museum. He tweets as @northumbriana and is currently writing a social history of Newcastle United FC for Little, Brown. 

Chi Sum TSE

Specialist in Education Policy Evaluation, PISA Team, OECD

Chi Sum is a member of the PISA team at the OECD in Paris. PISA is a world-class metric that measures the performance and efficiency of education systems. He provides education policymakers and school leaders with evidence-based recommendations to improve performance at both school and national levels. Chi Sum also contributes to the development of PISA instruments, leveraging his background in international assessment methodology and data science. He is currently researching the use of AI in international large-scale assessments, focusing on coding open-ended questions and providing detailed feedback for student improvement.

Before working in the field of education, Chi Sum has worked in the development field. During his time in Latin America, he collaborated with NGOs in Peru and Un Techo Para Mi País in Argentina, one of the largest civil society organizations in social development in the region. He also participated in a large-scale project with UNICEF Argentina, producing a publication on the lives of young people in informal settlements in Buenos Aires. In France, Chi Sum was elected to the trustee board of CCFD - Terre Solidaire, one of the largest development NGOs in France. He advised the NGO on strategies related to food security, international partnerships, and citizen empowerment in Latin America.

Chi Sum read an MSc in Educational Assessment from the University of Oxford. He previously received the French Government's Alexandre Yersin scholarship to study at Sciences Po Paris (Institut d'études politiques de Paris), where he earned an MA in International Development. Additionally, he has taken master-level courses on Mercosur at the University of Buenos Aires and graduated with a BA in English Studies from the City University of Hong Kong.

Chi Sum is a self-taught polyglot, with Cantonese as his mother tongue. He speaks English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Mandarin, and Brazilian Portuguese, and he has taken Arabic classes. He also spent six months living in Berlin.

Chris Zarraga

Director, Schools North East

Chris has been part of the Schools North East team since its inception in 2007 and in 2019 he was appointed Director.

Chris works with other leaders across the North East, the education sector and charity sector to represent the voice of North East schools, and lobby policy makers to ensure that the North East is not left behind when it comes to education policy. Chris has overseen the launch of the Ednorth evidence-based excellence programme, as well as the partnership with SHINE bringing over £500,000 worth of funding to North East schools.

Under Chris, Schools North East has moved to a greater focus on lobbying around education policy, with the launch of the Manifesto for North East Education in December 2019. As well as being a trustee of a local MAT, Chris sits on various boards including the board for Opportunity North East. Prior to joining Schools North East, Chris worked with over 165 schools in the North East and various education organisations including local authorities, Excellence Partnerships, 14-19 Groups, the Specialist Schools & Academies Trust, and School Improvement Officers. He led a large scale culture change project in education across the North East and was the development consultant for the LEGI funded Wansbeck Enterprise Education Network.