VNET Annual Conference 2027
This year’s Annual Conference puts inclusion firmly at the centre, bringing together educators and school leaders to explore the power of high-quality classroom practices.
- Thursday 11 March 2027
- 8.30am – 3.45pm
- Norwich City Football Club, Carrow Road Norwich Norfolk NR1 1JE
- Each VNET membership includes TWO free places!
Programme
- 9.00am – 10.15am : Welcome and morning keynote
High Expectations, Different Routes: Adapting Access Without Lowering Ambition
Adaptive teaching is not about making learning easier. It is about identifying the barriers that prevent pupils from accessing ambitious learning and making purposeful adaptations that help them succeed. In this keynote, Amjad Ali explores the tension between high expectations and appropriate support: when should we adapt the task, the teaching, the environment or the support around a pupil – and when might an adaptation unintentionally lower expectations?
Through practical examples, humour and reflection, Amjad will challenge delegates to consider whether we are adapting the learning or adapting access to the learning. He will explore how modelling, scaffolding, vocabulary, chunking, worked examples and responsive teaching can maintain challenge while increasing accessibility. The session will also consider when support becomes substitution, how adaptations can build rather than restrict independence, and why ‘needed for some, benefiting all’ can remain a powerful principle for inclusive teaching.
Building on these principles, Amjad will explore how leaders can support staff to implement adaptive teaching and embed it as consistent practice across their school.
Amjad Ali
Amjad Ali is a teacher, trainer, TEDx speaker and Senior Leader. Amjad has spent his teaching career teaching and leading in diverse and high-need schools; including seven years as a founding leadership team member of a new secondary start up school. He is a qualified SENDCO and was also trained as an Advanced Skills Teacher in Teaching and Learning. Before stepping into the world of education, he spent time as Play Worker and Teaching Assistant in Young Offender Prisons.
- 10.15am – 10.45am: Refreshments and Exhibitor Fair
- 10.45am – 11.30am: Workshop:
Supporting Without Doing: Using Teaching Assistants Effectively
Teaching assistants can have an enormous impact on pupils’ learning, but more adult support does not automatically mean more learning. How do we ensure support helps pupils to think, participate and become increasingly independent rather than inadvertently doing too much for them?
In this practical workshop, Amjad Ali explores what effective TA deployment looks like in the classroom and the relationship between teacher, teaching assistant and pupil. We will examine prompting, questioning, scaffolding and modelling; when to intervene and when to step away; and how teachers can plan for the effective use of additional adults.
Central to the session is a simple question: ‘Are we supporting the pupil to do it, or are we doing it for them?’ Delegates will leave with practical approaches for improving teacher–TA collaboration, reducing dependency and ensuring additional adult support maintains high expectations while developing pupil independence.
Amjad Ali
Amjad Ali is a teacher, trainer, TEDx speaker and Senior Leader. Amjad has spent his teaching career teaching and leading in diverse and high-need schools; including seven years as a founding leadership team member of a new secondary start up school. He is a qualified SENDCO and was also trained as an Advanced Skills Teacher in Teaching and Learning. Before stepping into the world of education, he spent time as Play Worker and Teaching Assistant in Young Offender Prisons.
- 11.40am – 12.30pm : Choose your morning workshop
Developing a Strategy for Improving MTC Outcomes and Beyond
Led by Ruth McGlone, Principal Consultant
How can schools develop a sustainable strategy to improve Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) outcomes while ensuring that fluency supports, deeper mathematical thinking?
This workshop will explore how schools can develop a longer term approach to not only improving outcomes in the MTC but also to think beyond basic recall. We will also consider how strong multiplication knowledge can provide a foundation for further development of pupils’ reasoning skills. The session will also include a case study from a school that has successfully developed its approach and improved MTC outcomes over several years, sharing key strategies, lessons learned and practical next steps.
Embedding WalkThrus Across a SEND Setting
Led by Fred Nicholson School – Heidi Philpott, Headteacher and Tim Coote, Assistant Headteacher
This workshop explores how Fred Nicholson School embedded Teaching WalkThrus across a SEND setting to establish structured, consistent, evidence-informed classroom practice.
They will share their implementation journey, showing how whole-school CPD and collaborative coaching cycles successfully introduced core strategies such as Cold Calling, Show-Me Boards, and Live Modelling. They will outline practical adaptations tailored for neurodiverse learners, including visual prompts, AAC core boards, choice cards, and extended processing times. Attendees will gain insights into how these adapted strategies support learning and raise student engagement across a range of needs and key stages.
Enrichment in Schools – Life Ready Curriculum
Led by Danny Wagstaff, Director of Education of Hearts Academy Trust
Danny Wagstaff will share the Life Ready Curriculum which he has developed at Hearts Academy Trust. It is built on the DfE’s enrichment framework, to provide essential life skills through enrichment. See how this is integrated into school life and how it is supporting pupils.
- 12.30pm – 1.30pm: Lunch and Exhibitor Fair
- 1.35pm – 2.30pm : Choose your afternoon workshop:
From Data to Difference:
Pupil Progress Meetings That Move Combined Outcomes
Led by Emma Adcock, Principal Consultant
Pupil progress meetings can be the most powerful hour in a school’s calendar, or just another data drop.
This practical workshop explores how to turn them into sharp, solution-focused conversations that move children forward in achieving the expected standard in combined reading, writing and maths.
Emma Adcock will be joined by Shannon O’Sullivan, Executive Head Teacher of Nightingale Federation, whose combined outcomes for reading, writing, and maths at the expected standard are some of the highest in the country.
The workshop will unpick what happens before, during and after an effective meeting: the right questions to ask, how to spot pupils at risk of missing the combined measure and how to turn discussion into precise actions that teachers own.
You’ll leave with ready-to-use structures and prompts to take back to school.
Sport Sanctuaries: Supporting Inclusion Through Movement and Relationships
Led by Neil Moggan, former Director of Sport, Health and RSHE, author of Time to RISE Up and founder of Future Action and Anita Fiddes Kapadia, Lead Physical Education Teacher, Alternative Provision Coordinator and Mental Health First Aider at Bure Park Specialist Academy
How can Sport Sanctuaries help children regulate and become ready to learn?
This session explores how movement and relationships can support children with high energy levels, including those with ADHD, to return to their window of tolerance. Relevant to mainstream primary schools, specialist settings and internal alternative provision, it draws on Bure Park Specialist Academy’s experience, where movement alongside Thrive supported physical holds falling from 50 to 10 over two years.
During the workshop Neil will share practical principles, helping delegates consider individual needs, pupil voice, available spaces and activities, then identify three actions to develop a sanctuary in their setting.
Good Food Transforms Schools
Led by Chefs in Schools
National school food charity Chefs in Schools explores how school food can have a transformational impact, how redefining mealtimes creates calmer dining halls, improves behaviour, and drives inclusion. They are working in partnership with Lakenham Primary School in Norwich who will join us to share their case study. Discover practical, actionable steps to improve food culture and to prepare for the September 2027 School Food Standards.
- 2.30pm – 3.30pm : Afternoon Keynote
The White Working-Class Inquiry: Turning Evidence into School-Wide Action
This keynote will explore the critical findings of PF Global’s Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes.
Katie Carr, Director in the Education Practice at PF Global and author of the report, will open the session by breaking down the report’s key insights and what they mean for the future of education equity.
Following Katie, Danny Wagstaff, Director of Education of HEARTS Academy Trust, will demonstrate how to translate these findings into transformative practice. He will share practical strategies and a case study from Briscoe Primary School focused on leveraging marginal gains to deliver measurable, impact across schools for White Working Class students and communities.
Katie Carr
Katie Carr is a Director in the Education Practice at PF Global. She leads the research for the Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes and a range of other high-profile education research and strategy projects, including surfacing the views of parents on education in the Parent Voice Project and understanding the views of parents, pupils and school staff in improving attendance in schools. Prior to this, Katie spent 10 years at the Department for Education, including as Chief of Staff to two Schools Ministers. She helped steer major legislation through Parliament and led national work on teacher recruitment and retention, regional school improvement, and school and trust strategy. Katie is Chair of Governors at a London secondary academy and a trustee of Tutors United.
Danny Wagstaff
Danny has worked in education for 16 years, predominantly in East London and communities experiencing high levels of disadvantage. He is currently Director of Education for a primary school trust and an Executive Headteacher within HEARTS Academy Trust. His previous experience includes working as a Head of School and holding a range of subject leadership roles. Danny is passionate about all aspects of curriculum development and, in particular, how a high-quality, ambitious curriculum can improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.
- 3.30pm : Close
With thanks to our conference sponsor:
VNET Annual Conference – Exhibitors:
