Exploring Excellence

Calling all teachers and trainees: Join us at our Exploring Excellence in Education Conference on Monday, 23 June 2025, Salesian College, Chertsey. Early bird tickets are on sale now until March 31st.

Join us at our next conference:
Exploring Excellence in Education

As a trust, we aim to make a wide range of professional development opportunities accessible for all our staff, teachers and teaching trainees. As such, we are thrilled to invite teachers and trainees to our second Exploring Excellence in Education conference. It's a chance to learn from our fantastic keynote speakers, to enjoy a day of seminars, networking and to take away lots of practical and engaging ideas to consider and apply in the classroom.

When: Monday, 23 June 2025
Where: Salesian College, Highfield Road, Chertsey KT16 8BX
Time: 9:00am - 3:15pm

Early Bird Tickets (until March 31st): £35 for Teachers (£42.50 after)

Teacher Trainee tickets: £15 with code: TSE2025

For group bookings please email l.taylor@sjb.surrey.sch.uk

Click here to register for the event.

Meet our Keynote Speakers

Rachel Ball - Keynote Speaker	Rachel Ball - The Scaffolding Effect Rachel Ball is Coaching Development Lead at Steplab and a former senior leader in charge of Teaching and Learning and CPD, based in the North West. An SLE and passionate History teacher with over 20 years of experience, Rachel is also a co-author of the upcoming book The Scaffolding Effect, published as part of the Inner Drive Teacher CPD series, due to be released in early Summer. In her session, Rachel will cover adaptive teaching and scaffolding strategies and how to make them work in the classroom without creating additional workload.
Amjad Ali - Keynote Speaker	Amjad Ali - SEND in Schools Amjad Ali (@TeachLeadAAli) is a teacher, trainer, TEDx speaker and Senior Leader. He currently works four days a week in a startup secondary school and offers CPD/INSET on his other day. Amjad has spent his teaching career working in challenging, diverse schools. He is a qualified SENDCO and was also trained as an Advanced Skills Teacher in Teaching and Learning. He is 'the chalkface' teacher, who shares 'what works' in an engaging and easy-to-understand format. Join him in his keynote where he will equip us all with low-effort, high-impact ideas to use instead of rather than in addition to your everyday classroom practice. He will answer questions such as: What does adaptive teaching really mean? Is it even possible?
Kate Jones - Keynote Speaker	Kate Jones - Retrieval Practice Kate Jones is Senior Associate for Teaching and Learning at Evidence Based Education. She is an experienced teacher, leader, bestselling author, blogger and award-winning international speaker. Kate is the author of nine books, including a bestselling series on retrieval practice, and she was the editor of the researchEd Guide to Cognitive Science (2023). Kate writes extensively about education on her website and in various educational magazines, including Teach Middle East Magazine and the TES and is also the founder of The Love To Teach Podcast. You can connect with Kate on social media @KateJones_Teach. In her session Kate will answer questions such as: How can retrieval practice be effectively embedded across the curriculum? How can teachers and learners harness the benefits of retrieval practice, inside and outside the classroom?
Sam Crome - Keynote Speaker	Sam Crome - Building Teacher Belonging and Well-being Sam is a Deputy Headteacher at St Peter's Catholic School, Director of Education at Xavier, and author from Surrey, UK. He is passionate about understanding how teams truly thrive, so that we can create amazing workplaces for our staff and students. In his session, Sam will address teacher retention and explore the research behind belonging and wellbeing to shed light on what really works for staff wellbeing. He will share practical strategies to build schools that help all teachers thrive for the long term.