ELT Conference - April 2022

Our keynote speaker is Matthew Burton, the teacher who won the hearts of the nation on the hit TV documentary, Educating Yorkshire. Matthew is now headteacher at Thornhill Academy in Wakefield.

What we do, who we do it for, and why we do it. Matthew Burton will reflect on the unique role of the educator in 2022, reminding us why we get up in the morning to do what we do.

Creating a safe space for everyone to thrive: What does "bring your authentic self to work" mean through an EDI lens? Louise Goux-Wirth will talk about creating a culture where everyone can be their authentic selves and share best practice recommendations to help us turn ideals into reality.

Louise Goux-Wirth is an award-winning equality specialist with 13+ years experience in delivering culture change through strategy and programme development, training and stakeholder engagement.

Differentiating ELT products and services in a crowded space. Stand out in the crowd and leverage opportunities to suit your brand. Ann Hawkings will look at how to differentiate your ELT products and services in a mature, commoditised market by adopting a customer value-driven strategy that considers international market segmentation.

Ann Hawkings has over 20 years' experience in sales and marketing within the language travel industry and now works as a consultant.

Service quality – how to maintain it when teams are tired, reduced or completely new. You had an excellent reputation pre-Covid that you are determined to uphold but the pandemic has left you with a much smaller team, or lots of new inexperienced team members and everyone is carrying a heavier load than before. The challenge we face as an industry is to be at our best when the numbers of students start to flood back in, but our resources are at an all-time low.

Celine Aloe is co-founder and managing director of UKLC.

Managing your team's professional development and wellbeing in turbulent times. During the recent pandemic we have seen a real need for immediate and effective professional development to help keep schools afloat in turbulent times. Fiona Dunlop will look at how we have maintained good team morale whilst ensuring that our teams are developing to their full potential.

Fiona Dunlop has over 30 years worldwide experience in the field of English language training and is one of English UK's DELTM trainers.

Shrinking your carbon footprint (and enhancing the image of your school) Language schools need to step up and ensure that they are doing everything they can to lessen the impact their activities have on the environment; and reducing their carbon footprint is a relatively easy and painless way to get going. Jonathan Dykes will outline various steps you can take (without breaking the bank) which could benefit the school, as well as the environment.

Jonathan Dykes is one of the founders of Green Standard Schools.