Teaching and Leading

I am a Deputy Headteacher at St Bonaventure’s Catholic School in East London and continue to teach Religious Education. My career has been spent in Catholic comprehensive schools, with roles spanning subject leadership, pastoral leadership and whole-school development.

That combination matters to me. Senior leadership can easily pull you away from the classroom, but teaching remains one of the places where ideas are tested against reality: whether a curriculum actually works, whether a resource really helps, whether a routine makes a difference, and whether young people find what we teach worth thinking about.

Writing, Curriculum and the Wider RE Community

Alongside school leadership, I have written and edited books and classroom materials for Bloomsbury Education, Oxford University Press, Collins and other publishers. My work includes 100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Outstanding RE Lessons, Succeeding as an RE Teacher, GCSE Religious Studies materials and the three-year Source to Summit Key Stage 3 course.

I served on the ATCRE teacher consultation panel for the Catholic Religious Education Directory, helped produce the Pearson/Edexcel Religious Studies Entry Level Qualification and have contributed to Religious Education through teacher networks, syllabus work, professional associations, conferences and national consultation.

Catholic Education, Formation and Public Life

Increasingly, my work asks a wider set of questions: What are Catholic schools for? How do we form teachers and leaders? How should schools think about character, virtue, technology, vocation and the common good? How do students move from learning Catholic Social Teaching to living it?

That has led to work around community organising, student civic action, formation and school culture, as well as writing that sits somewhere between professional reflection, theology and the daily realities of school life.

Professional Learning

I work with schools, dioceses, trusts and teacher networks through CPD and speaking. Recent diocesan sessions have included the Archdioceses of Birmingham, Southwark and Liverpool, particularly around implementing the RED, using published curriculum resources well and deepening pupils’ thinking in RE.

Speaking & CPD

Teaching & Service

Alongside school leadership, I serve as Chair of Governors at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School in Upminster and as a Catholic Schools Inspector for the Diocese of Brentwood. Governance and inspection both make me look at schools from a different angle: stewardship, accountability, mission and what the lived experience of Catholic education actually feels like.

Earlier roles have included Director of the Agnus Dei Catholic School Alliance and Specialist Leader of Education in RE, alongside national and local curriculum, consultation and professional-development work.