National Tutors' Conference 2019
National Tutors' Conference
The National Tutors' Conference 2019
2019 Highlights:
National Tutors’ Conference, 25th October, The Royal Society: The Future of Tutoring: Evolution or Revolution?
The 4th Annual Tutors’ conference took place at the Royal Society last Friday – and what a thought-provoking and inspiring event it was. The theme – which focused on the need for evolution or revolution in the world of education as a whole and tutoring’s place with in it – was addressed in variety of ways throughout the day.
James Turner of the Sutton Trust talked about education’s role in creating social mobility, and the potential for increasing its efficacy through the addition of more 1-to-1 tuition, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. As well as suggesting increased use of the Pupil Premium, he asked us to consider donating a percentage of the hours we tutor to this cause.
Dr. Kathy Weston spoke powerfully and inspirationally about the role tutors have to play in contributing to a child’s wellbeing and resilience rather than just acting as an academic coach and teacher. An integral part of this is spending time with the child’s parents to create a ‘we’re all in this together’ approach that achieves more than the sum of its parts.
The break-out sessions focused largely on providing tutors with practical help and advice – and the comfortable rooms were packed with delegates taking the chance both to listen and to ask questions. Joe Nutt’s session was an interesting counterpoint to the Sutton Trust’s view of mobility; in his view schools can enhance social mobility at an individual level but are unsuited and ineffective at doing so on a large scale. It made me wonder whether an increase in 1-to-1 tutoring as a normal part of every child’s education might enhance the effectiveness of education as an agent of change – something President Tim Morris mentioned in his opening address.
The final plenary session on AI gave us an insight into what AI can – and can’t – do. Alex Asher’s view is that it can, and increasingly will, take over some of the more mechanical aspects of tutoring but that personal inspiration, and the wider aspects of creating the well-balanced individuals that Kathy Weston talked about, will still require the personal touch of the human tutor.
As well as the speaker sessions, there was an excellent range of exhibitors present, offering tutors practical resources and advice , and the whole ambience of the setting was highly conducive to the networking that was clearly going on all day.
Add to this the quality of the refreshments and the helpfulness of the staff and it all made for a thoroughly enjoyable, as well as thoroughly valuable, day. I am very much looking forward to next year’s event already.
2019 National Tutors’ Conference Sponsors
What Attendees Say
“It was a great day – kicked off wonderfully by James Turner and Kathy Weston. I hope you are pleased!”
“A fabulous day – thank you to all who made it such a worthwhile and motivating event.”
“Congratulations on such a successful conference. I didn’t speak to anyone who wasn’t thoroughly complimentary”
“Dr Kathy Weston’s inspiring presentation made every mile of the long journey down from Scotland worth it!”
“Really superb start of the day (Dr Kathy Weston’s opening speech). Inspiring and motivating as ever. One of the true hihglights of the private Tutor’s calendar”
“We enjoyed it. Informative and well organised! Plus great venue.”
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Guest Speakers
Alex Asher
Alex has a passion for business, online education and adventure. His work has involved conducting more than 100 interviews with edtech entrepreneurs and experts in the application of technologies including AI and machine learning.
Together with ex-Harvard education entrepreneur, Brian Kannt, he has co-authored a book on the future of online language education.
When he is not writing he leads LearnCube, a UK-based virtual classroom software company, giving him an in-depth understanding of the intersection between business, education and technology. His goal is to share insights, examples and practical advice with a focus on the future of tutoring.
Daniel Licence
Dan Licence is a Mental Health and Wellbeing Coach at Osborne Cawkwell, a tuition agency based in London. He has worked for a number of years with parents, tutors and teachers to help recognise the symptoms of a range of mental health problems, and how to apply Mental Health First Aid techniques in order to prevent them from developing into more serious issues.
His particular areas of interest are Mindfulness and Positive Psychology, and how we can incorporate these into our lives in order to promote not just the absence of poor mental health, but also positive mental well-being. A lot of the work he does with tutors and teachers in particular, is training them to incorporate techniques from these disciplines into their lessons, in order for students to perform better academically.
As well as being a Mental Health First Aid Instructor for Mental Health First Aid England, and a trained Mindfulness Teacher through the Mindfulness in Schools Projects, he has also worked in face to face suicide prevention, and most recently, he was the lead facilitator at Ruby Wax’s Frazzled Cafe in East London, which he ran for over 2 years.
James Turner
James is the Chief Executive of the Sutton Trust, the UK’s leading foundation for social mobility, and has been in post since February 2019. Prior to that, James was Deputy CEO of the Trust’s sister charity, the Education Endowment Foundation. He led the Trust’s £135m bid to set up the EEF in 2011, was its interim CEO, and served as a founding Trustee.
James is also a trustee of The Brilliant Club, the Centre for Homelessness Impact, and a governor of a comprehensive school in the East Midlands, where he lives with his family.
Joe Nutt
Joe Nutt is an international educational consultant, author and columnist for TES. After almost 20 years teaching English in schools ranging from the highly selective, private sector to challenging, inner city state schools, he was seconded to the UK’s Department of Education from his teaching post at the City of London School.
The second half of his career has been in business and he has held senior roles at Digitalbrain, RM and EDT, as well as being a tutor for Teach First. He led a team of six implementing the national intranet for Scotland, ‘Glow’, which won a Global Learning Impact Award in 2009. Subsequently he has worked as an Associate for Deloitte, Civica, Mouchel, Renaissance, RTI, EdComs and NFER.
In 2019 he carried out a landscape review of social mobility research for a leading independent educational research organisation, providing advice and guidance to their internal social mobility research team.
His books include John Donne: The Poems; An Introduction to Shakespeare’s Late Plays, and A Guidebook to Paradise Lost, all published by Macmillan. He has published educational research internationally and his new book, The Point of Poetry, was published by Unbound in March 2019.
Dr Kathryn Weston
Dr Kathy Weston is one of the country’s most sought after speakers in the area of parenting, education and family life. She trained as a criminologist at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge and worked in policy research for several years, before moving into the area of research within Higher Education. She has since become one of the country’s leading experts in parental engagement and children’s lives and learning. In 2018, she co-authored Engaging Parents with Bloomsbury Press, and is a regular keynote speaker at conferences all over the UK and Europe. She advises schools on all aspects of working effectively with parents. For the last ten years, she has co-produced ‘The Parents’ Show’ on Radio Verulam 92.6FM and produces the podcast series, ‘Get a Grip’. She is a regular contributor on BBC Radio. To learn more about her work go to: http://www.drkathyweston.com
Nicky Horn and Claire Bennett
Nicky taught in the boarding schools for 20 years. Her role started as a Games teacher with non-team students and ended as Assistant House Mistress and Head of Middle School in charge of 300 students. She began to realise that students struggled to articulate their strengths – which affected how they worked and how they saw their future.
Claire was a member of the GB Women’s Foil Fencing Team and part of the World Class Performance Programme. She represented GB in the European and World Championships from the age of 14. She won medals in the 2010 Commonwealth Fencing Games. Up until the age of 18 her schooling was enhanced by tutoring.
They now work together to deliver lessons on mindset and attitude from elite sports people to help young people identify their strengths. This leads to greater self awareness and confidence.
Dr Christine Butenuth
Dr Butenuth organised courses for 14-year olds at Imperial College, London, to help them decide their A-levels. An initiative that was financed by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Council (EPSRC). Christine is a chartered geologist, holds a degree in mathematics and statistics and was involved with the then Teacher Training Agency. She is a qualified MBTI practitioner.
Emma Ford and Linda Buttler
Linda Butler and Emma Ford are co-Directors of C4C Ltd, they work in an area that excites them: people, their potential and their futures. They are personal and career development specialists supporting teachers, schools, organisations & individuals using one to one coaching, workshops, webinars and our resources. Linda has a public sector and Business School background and Emma a Corporate and graduate recruitment background, both are qualified coaches and now work in education whether it be schools, universities or business schools. They especially want to support people to have more constructive, productive and better conversations and relationships.
Suzanne Reece
Suzanne Reece is an education coach, solicitor (non-practising) and author.
She provides opinion writing, LLM coaching, drafting and advocacy training for law students as well as coaching and mentoring for new professionals. She is the author of several books aimed at making it easier for students to understand the complexities of writing essays, legal opinions and LLM dissertations.