Every day’s a school day at The Key Group
How our speaker programme is giving colleagues an education in education
At The Key Group, we believe that to work here and thrive, you need to really understand the sector. Whether you’re working in marketing, engineering, content production, or product management, if you don’t understand the people you serve, and the environment they’re in, your ability to help them with good tools will always be limited.
We use the loose term “educationalists” to think about who we are. So you’re a sales person, and also an educationalist. An operations lead, and also an educationalist.
But anyone who has worked in education will tell you that the knowledge and experience needed to really be considered “an educationalist” is constantly shifting. The sector has moved on massively since the evolution of academies, and then MATs, or from server-based software to cloud-based, or from attitudes to flexibility in the school workforce pre- and post-pandemic. It’s not something that anyone can learn and tick off, and with AI firmly on the agenda, we can be sure that the pace of change will continue to speed up.
So a few years ago we started to think about how to support colleagues to feel more on top of all this knowledge. We were also increasingly bringing in people who might be expert software developers but from other sectors. We wondered if we could create an external speaker programme to give staff, effectively, a comprehensive curriculum in “the education sector”. Without going back to school.
Since 2022, we’ve brought in speakers on a monthly basis to talk to staff about what they’re working on, to share research and opinion, to challenge thinking or to set us straight. It’s optional, but we always get a great turnout, and a bunch of people who watch it on catch-up if they can’t make it.
As the lucky person who gets to curate and chair it, I can tell you that the range of speakers is quite enormous. We’ve had the youngest chair of governors in the country (Shekeila Scarlett), to arguably our most experienced academic in assessment (Professor Tim Oates). We’ve had speakers from both ends of the political spectrum - the doyen of Conservative education policy (Sir Nick Gibb) at one end, and a key schools figure in the last Labour government (Lord Jim Knight) at the other. We’ve listened to leading political commentators (Sam Freedman) talking about the big picture, and on-the-ground MAT CEOs telling us about how it all plays out at trust level (Paula Ledger).
We’ve covered leadership principles (Liz Robinson), comparative judgement using AI (Daisy Christodoulou), SEND (David Thomas OBE), the view from parents (Kirsty Yates), social mobility (Dan Morrow), policy (Steve Besley, Peter Doyle), the leadership unions (Paul Whiteman, Julie McCulloch). We’ve heard from journalists (Laura McInerney, Warwick Mansell), data researchers (James Zuccullo, Dawson McClean, Jason Gould), a Commission (Baroness Mary Bousted), teaching workforce specialists (Melanie Renowden), SLT mental health campaigners (James Pope), and Trust specialists (Steve Rollett). We’ve loved the company of a variety of experienced MAT CEOs (Jonny Uttley, Paul Kennedy, Mark Wilson) and new ones who’ve talked through their first 100 days (Neil Miley). We’ve covered international schools (Paul Wood) and how the Pearson teacher of the year is supporting boys around issues with toxic masculinity (Oli McVeigh). This month sees our final session of the year, as we hear about the motherhood penalty in teaching and what can be done about it (Emma Sheppard).
If that sounds like the kind of roll call that would get you excited about becoming more “educationalist”, then we’ve done a good job. If you’d put an entirely different set of people on your own ”dream curriculum” - we’d love to know who that is so we can get them involved. And finally, if you’d like to feature yourself, or know someone who would really help shape our thinking, please do get in touch at nicola.westjones@thekeygroup.com. We are all ears.
