Our Festival of Education allowed us to offer over 500 delegates access to wide-ranging CPD in the form of internationally-renowned educational speakers, bespoke workshops, 'think-tanks' and the opportunity to work collaboratively across the schools.

We were also very excited to launch our first parallel student conference to run alongside our staff conference. 60 children from our six schools worked with Solutions 4 the Planet on the problem of 'how can we make our schools more sustainable for the future?'. We had a very impressive panel of experts lined up to analyse and support their findings on the day, including the Mayor of South Yorkshire, Oliver Coppard.

Delegates were treated to a fantastic lunch prepared by Mercia School's very own chef. The 'family dining' experience was a real talking point, with delegates experiencing how students at the school dine together, including serving each other and clearing the tables as students do.

Feedback

It was a huge pleasure, thanking for inviting me, and I had a great time. It was one of the best organised events I have ever been to!

Tom Bennett

I wanted to say how much I enjoyed this year's conference.  I can only imagine all the planning and organising that goes on behind the scenes - I thought it was a brilliant day, super organised and I got a lot from it.  

Delegate

Thank you so much for having me yesterday. It was so lovely to see the ideas the children came up with and gave me lots of hope for the future of the planet!

Panellist from the student conference

Congratulations on the event – the feedback speaking to the staff was that it was the best yet and they really enjoyed both the breakout sessions being smaller (so not all in one group) and the fact that TAs were with teaching staff rather than separate.

Fiona Benoist, Trustee

What an inspiring session.  How amazing were they all!.  I felt so emotional in parts of it.  You must all be so proud of what you’ve achieved today and to see that level of engagement from all of your students too.  Just fantastic.

Karen Mosley, Managing Director of HLM Architects

The speakers atthis years conference were really great!  I really got a lot out of the ones I saw.

 

Great for refection, and lots of ideas I can practically implement into my teaching.

Delegate