![Event theme image](https://schoolsnortheast.org/wp-content/uploads/Summit-page-header.png)
Summit 2024
St James' Park, Newcastle
Educating Westminster:
Influencing the Direction of Change
As school leaders, you work tirelessly to educate our region’s young people to give them the very best start in life, despite the pressure, workload, and ever-changing landscape that you’re forced to contend with. Well, now it’s time to flip the script and EDUCATE WESTMINSTER, so that we can influence thinking to help create an education system where those difficult challenges are easier to overcome.
Despite what those with the most power might think, they can’t know everything, and it’s our job as a community to educate decision makers on exactly what it is that the North East needs, so they can finally align their policies with our priorities. With the results of the general election signifying change, the Schools North East Summit 2024 invites those in school leadership roles to come together and recognise the critical role they play in helping shape our region’s education.
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Event Costs
Partner School£100 + VAT
Non Partner School£160 + VAT
Commercial/Education Supporter£250 + VAT
Non School£300 + VAT
Group bookings of 3 or more10% discount
Book your placeEvent Overview
![Ziauddin Yousafzai](https://schoolsnortheast.org/wp-content/uploads/image1-scaled.jpeg)
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](https://schoolsnortheast.org/wp-content/uploads/Partner-School-Graphics-2.png)
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](https://schoolsnortheast.org/wp-content/uploads/Margaret-Mulholland-New.jpg)
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](https://schoolsnortheast.org/wp-content/uploads/IMG_3548-scaled.jpg)
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](https://schoolsnortheast.org/wp-content/uploads/449217084_1152180076008362_627-668d049bc9ed1.jpg)
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](https://schoolsnortheast.org/wp-content/uploads/Chris.jpg)
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.
Time to Get Right Back to Where we Started From – The ‘Real’ David Cameron
If we are thinking about educating Westminster, maybe this is a good time to look backwards as well as forwards. If successful systems are those that adapt, rather than those that adopt, it might be time to take the ideological blinkers off and see what the strengths in our system are and look at how we build on these. We are too ready to look at system change and reform, before we think about the less glamorous task of fixing the broken bits and highlighting the many successes of schools and teachers
Regional Variations in Student Performance: Insights from PISA Data – Chi Sum TSE
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) measures 15-year-olds’ abilities in reading, mathematics, and science, evaluating their skills in applying this knowledge to real-life challenges. With participation from over 80 countries and economies, PISA provides invaluable data for global benchmarking and offers policymakers evidence, insights, and opportunities for international peer learning.
Although PISA commonly focuses on national-level cross-country comparisons, it also provides data for regions within countries. This regional data reveals that student performance can vary within countries, indicating that national averages alone can offer only a partial view of a country’s educational attainment.
The presentation will delve into these regional differences, focusing on the teaching and learning environments as well as the socio-economic and cultural backgrounds of students. By examining these elements at regional level, we can better understand how different regions compare within a country and identify the factors that need addressing to reduce educational inequalities.
Learning from the past: the rise and fall and rise again of North East England? – Dr Dan Jackson
Dan will explore how the North East’s dramatic history helped to make us England’s most distinctive region, and how learning from the achievements of the past might help us all to build a better future.
Inclusive schools: SEND Built in, not bolted on – Margaret Mulholland
With ever increasing numbers of learners being identified with SEND and with growing complexity of need, it’s more important than ever that education policy supports leaders to practice fair and effective leadership.
Schools are working hard and have significant success over the last five years to improve the experiences of young people with SEND. Brave leadership has strengthened inclusion despite the disincentives of accountability and cost. How can we build on school knowledge and strengths ensuring best practice is shared, not constantly reinvented across the country.
This presentation will explore the possibilities presented by a new government to influence change for our most vulnerable learners. This is a timely opportunity to advocate for a systemic approach to the education policy making process that plans explicitly and deliberately for SEND provision as the first thought rather than as an afterthought. The new government recognise the ‘SEND system is broken’ so the recommendations we make for improvement have to reduce incidence of lost learning through building on the knowledge and expertise in the system.
Tyne Bridge Restoration Travel Information
If you are planning to travel to the Schools North East Summit by car, please remember that the Tyne Bridge is currently undergoing major restoration works and is down to one lane each way.
We recommend avoiding the Tyne Bridge as there are expected delays of up to 40 minutes at peak travel times. Heavy congestion is expected on the Quayside route, Swing Bridge and routes to and from Redheugh Bridge and all approaches to the Tyne Bridge from both Newcastle and Gateshead sides.
Public transport is strongly advised when travelling to and from Newcastle city centre and Gateshead town centre, whether or not you now drive over the Tyne. For those who can’t use public transport, other river crossings that drivers could use include the A19, with the Tyne Tunnel connecting North Shields and Jarrow. Further west, motorists could cross the Tyne via the A1 on Blaydon Bridge or Scotswood Bridge, which connects the A694 and A695.
Whichever route you decide to use, we advise planning ahead, allow more time for your journeys, and expect delays.
More information about park and ride/ public transport and journey:
NUFC Parking Information – information provided by St James’ Park
We are pleased to offer limited free, on-site car parking for any guests using our conference and banqueting facilities.
The car parking areas are accessed from Barrack Road. At the traffic lights, turn into the ground and drive straightforward, past a multi-deck car park on your left. You will then see a sign for “Conference & Banqueting Car Parking”. Follow the arrow down the road, as it curves to the left and it will lead you into a multistorey car park.
Guests are free to park on Level One. Levels Two and above are not owned by ourselves so parking is not permitted. Once parked on Level One, guests must input their car registration details into the Parking Eye computer situated in the Milburn Reception area, failure to do so may result in a parking fine.
Should the unlikely event of level one of the multi-storeys being full, guests are asked to use the pay and display multi-deck car park as previously mentioned. There is a cost of 90p per hour here.
Please note, all other parking spaces in the ground, other than those mentioned above on level one of the multi-storeys, are owned by the City Council and you require either a permit or a ticket to park there. If you are a conference organiser, please ensure that your delegates are aware of the designated Newcastle United Conference and Banqueting car parking areas. Newcastle United will not be held responsible for any parking tickets received by guests whilst attending events here.
Should guests require disabled parking, the City Council bays are available on the outskirts of the multi-storey, on the ground level.
Alternative Parking
Other car parks located close to the stadium:
Public Transport
Newcastle Central station is a 10 minute walk away.
Newcastle Bus Station is an 8 minute walk away.
The nearest Metro stop is St James’ Park which is 1 minute walk away.
WiFi
Network: NUFC
Password: stjamespark24
Arrival
Please head to the 4th floor and register your arrival on the screen at the registration desk
Please use the form below to book if you have any issues click here to open in your browser.
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