Delivering Statutory Relationships and Sex Education - Speakers

Thursday 17 Oct 2019
IBIS, ILEC Conference Centre, London

Alice Hoyle (Chair), RSE Expert, Do...RSE

Alice Hoyle has an MSc in Sexual Health Education and works freelance as an advisory teacher of Relationships and Sex Education (RSE). A qualified teacher she now also works as an LGBT Youth worker and youth voice co-ordinator.  Alice works for DO…RSE for schools, and Westminster University as a practitioner/researcher exploring the role of parents in sex education. Alice is an elected member of the Sex Education Forum Advisory group and was made a life member of the PSHE Association in 2014.  Alice's second book- a book for RSE teachers filled with session activities and ideas will be published by the end of the year. 


Sophie Allen, Headteacher, Stonebridge Primary School

Sophie has a passion for safeguarding and has been a safeguarding lead for over 15 years, a role which she has not relinquished even as a head. She has developed a broad safeguarding team to ensure all aspects of safeguarding are met within a complex and challenging context. As a specialist centre for safeguarding, Stonebridge School offers a range of courses throughout the year and also organises additional events on safeguarding issues for Brent schools through the Brent Schools Partnership. Sophie has spoken at many safeguarding events and conferences sharing the good practice and expertise of her school.


Sidonie Bertrand-Shelton, Head of Education Programmes, Stonewall

Sidonie is Head of Education Programmes as Stonewall UK. Stonewall is the leading Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans (LGBT) equality charity, working with more than 1,300 primary and secondary schools across the UK. Delivering training to equip teachers with the skills to tackle Homophobic, Biphobic and Transphobic bullying and language, creating supportive resources for schools and Bronze, Silver, Gold awards to benchmark best practice. Sidonie has been at Stonewall for over three years, leading on working with church and faith schools and developing new programmes. Before that she worked in student voice in higher education on equality and diversity.


Claire Boyd, Head of Junior School, Wimbledon High School

Claire was Head of Lower School at Ravenscourt Park Preparatory School in Chiswick before joining the Girls’ Day School Trust as Head of Prep School at Sydenham High School in 2014. In September 2019 Claire will take up the post of Head of Junior School at Wimbledon High School GDST. Education that empowers girls and young women is her primary area of interest, but she is also passionate about the wider scope schools have for shaping the world of tomorrow and the role educators can play in fostering aspiration and ambition in all aspects of child development.


Claire Lightley, Director, Lightley Consulting

Claire Lightley worked for FPA, the sexual health charity, for 17 years, starting as the learning disabilities project manager, then outreach worker and finally as Head of Training whilst also working for four years as the RSE advisor to St Philips Special School in Kingston. Claire is co-author of Sexuality and Learning Disability: a guide to supporting continuing professional development (FPA 2011, 2nd edition) and Learning Disabilities, Sex and the Law, a practical guide FPA (2009, 2nd edition).  Claire now runs her own training consultancy, specialising in RSE for people with learning disabilities.


Kay Joel, Senior Consultant (Education), NSPCC Consultancy Service

Kay has been a Senior Consultant for safeguarding in education at NSPCC for seven years with over 20 years’ experience working in primary and special education. She works directly with the education sector carrying out safeguarding reviews. Within the NSPCC, Kay has developed the Education Self- Assessment Tool, a free, online tool for schools to audit their safeguarding provision which is now used by over 7000 schools. She has also acted as education consultant on a range of NSPCC projects, including the development of eLearning courses including Child Protection Awareness in Education, Managing Sexualised Behaviour and Safeguarding for School Governors. 


Kieren McCarthy, Executive Director, IFFOR

A policymaker and journalist, Kieren is Executive director of IFFOR, a non-profit based in the United States that specialises in developing policies and educational materials around online sexual content. It is the creator of an eight-part educational course that tackles online sexual content, and related issues, for children aged 11-14 called AtFirstSite. Kieren has written extensively about the internet and the challenges it poses for, among others, the New Scientist, Guardian and Sunday Times. He ran the public participation program for internet overseeing body ICANN for a number of years, started a compnay focused on internet policy, and wrote a book about the domain name Sex.com that actually has very little to do with sex.


Andrew Moffat, Assistant Headteacher, Parkfield Community School

Andrew is Assistant Headteacher at a large inner city primary in Birmingham. He is the author of “No Outsiders in our school: Teaching the Equality Act in Primary Schools” and is noted for work with faith communities on LGBT equality. In 2017, Andrew was awarded an MBE for services to equality and diversity in education. Andrew was recently named among the top 50 teachers shortlisted for the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize.


Ben Morgan, Assistant Head, Burton Borough High School

Ben is Vice Principal at Burton Borough School, overseeing the safety, welfare and behaviour of students.  He has recently spoken at conferences nationally and delivered a number of workshops on the subject of inclusion and mental health.  Burton Borough has just become the first school in the West Midlands to receive the Carnegie Centre of Mental Health Gold standard and the first school in the country to be recognised by Public Health England for its outstanding culture in this area. In launching its SRE programme the school has collapsed its normal pastoral structure and now has a model which not only fulfils government requirements without impacting upon curriculum time, but more importantly meets the needs of its student population.


Louise Pope, Head of PSRE, Chew Valley School

Louise has been a secondary school RE teacher for 27 years. 10 years ago she took over the management of PSHE at Chew Valley School, and transformed the subject from ‘tutor time’ to a curriculum area taught by specialist teams at KS3, 4 and year 12.  At the same time Louise took on the role of facilitating from a teacher-led to a student-led Equalities team, and the school joined the Stonewall school champions programme. Her emphasis on equality and diversity throughout the PSHE curriculum is in no small part due to the work of the Equalities team.


Roary Pownall HMI, National Lead for PSHE and Citizenship, Ofsted

Roary Pownall is one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors working directly for Ofsted. Roary joined Ofsted aft er a career in teaching across the full age-range of the primary years and has primary headship experience. His most recent school won numerous awards and was judged to be Outstanding in all areas at the last two Ofsted inspections.


Victoria Pugh, Lecturer, University of Worcester

Prior to joining the University of Worcester, Victoria spent 15 years working in primary schools both in the UK and abroad and has had experience teaching all year groups ranging from Nursery to Year 10. During her career in primary education, she has been part of a number of management teams in various roles and has spent the majority of her career as both PSHE coordinator and SENCo across the primary and secondary age phase. She worked as a specialist leader of education (SLE) for PSHE creating PSHE networks and training across Herefordshire and Worcestershire.