Yesterday saw the Step Up Network’s latest event – our largest event of the year, our Leadership Day. It was exactly a year since we’ve held our London Leadership Day in 2024 and this year, we were in the Midlands city of Wolverhampton. Our Leadership Day is designed to blend speakers, workshops, networking and socialising all in one; we are grateful for people who give up their weekend to join us and therefore we wish for our attendees to be empowered and engaged within a relaxing environment.

This event also saw many firsts and differences to our previous leadership day. For many of the people attending it was their first experience of a face-to-face event (although it was also great to see so many familiar faces returning to our network), in comparison to our London event we had a much wider reach geographically amongst our attendees and speakers including people coming from Birmingham, Bedford, Cambridge, London, Manchester, Staffordshire, Southend and many more locations too. It was also the first time we ran a networking and feedback session; we wanted to ensure that we continued the conversations beyond the day and really grow our community and network.

But let’s start where it all began… a longer than intended drive from Solihull to Wolverhampton was then made worth it by connecting with some of our attendees at the pre-event meal. We always try to put on pre and post event activity to enable that connection further too. It was lovely to speak to Andrea, Javay and Michelle – and the main thing that made it so great were the number of laughs exchanged throughout our conversations.

The following morning, I met up with Claudio Sisera, an absolute powerhouse in the education sphere doing great work to ensure more equity and equality within our workforce. I met at our hotel, and we drove to Grove Primary School, we were greeted by our host and senior Step Up volunteer, Christine Ivory (who is Assistant Headteacher at Grove) as well as another long term supporter of Step Up, Julia Hancock, who alongside Claudio was exhibiting at the event. We were then greeted by many more of our volunteers: Nikki Arkinstall, Adam Brett-Aguirre, Elaine Hayes, Rachael Jackson-Royal and Amy Jeetley, who all supported the set up and smooth running of the day. There’s a lot people don’t see behind the scenes, before our attendees arrived we set up the room, sorted materials, printed any relevant information, displayed refreshments, arranged tech requirements and ensured our attendees would have everything they needed (such as a quiet room when needed).

Then, people started arriving – our exhibitors first followed by our speakers and attendees. It’s always great to see people, give them a warm welcome and initially check in with them. It’s great to see the connection that goes on amongst our attendees, much of it organic and it’s great to see the new contacts and in some cases friendships that people leave our events with.

And at 10.35am we started. Christine and I opened the event with our welcome talk along with the Step Up story. The focus for my talk this year was about closing the leadership gap we have in our schools, which is a lot of what our work as an organisation focussed on. This was followed by our keynote speaker, David C Hall. I met David first at the Black Men Teach retreat in April 2024; David was the first person I spoke to at the event (after speaking to Albert and Johnoi), I remember distinctly his kindness and his purpose in life of aiding others to be great. David provided an inspiring talk that enabling our attendees to really think and reflect, an incredibly empowering way to start our event.

Then, we ran three minutes kinda of workshops for our attendees. We had a great range of presenters who presented on a wide range of topics:

• Albert Adeyemi: Secondary Pastoral Leader, Teacher of Maths & PE and Co-Founder of Black Men Teach – Thriving not Surviving.
• Phil Denton: Education Company Director, Speaker and Co-Author of ‘First 100 Days: Lessons in Leadership from the Football Bosses’, former Secondary Head – How premier league managers would lead schools.
• Keziah Featherstone: Secondary Executive Headteacher, Author, GSL and Trustee for WomenEd – Punk Leadership
• Julia Hancock: Founder of Boundless Learning Ltd, Coach and Resilient Leaders Elements Consultant, former Primary Head – Resilient Leadership: Playing with what matters.
• Dr Rachael Jackson-Royal: Secondary Head of Department, Trust Wide RE Lead, Teaching & Learning Lead, Step Up Volunteer, Postgraduate Student and RE Association Officer – A research informed approach to being an effective head of department.
• Amy Jeetley: Secondary Science Teacher and Professional Tutor for ITE and ECTs, Coach and Business Owner, Step Up Network Volunteer – The Art of Energy Transformation.
• Sophie Poduval-Morrell: Head of Future Faces at Birmingham Chamber of Commerce – The Power of Networking and Personal Brand.
• Kiran Satti: Primary Deputy Principal and Network Leader for WomenEd Book Club – Building on Barbie to break down barriers in Leadership.
• Andrea Welter: Primary Deputy Headteacher, Speaker and Networker – Tenacious Leadership.

In between sessions we saw our attendees come together and explore our marketplace of exhibitors (Black Men Teach, Boundless Learning, Male Childcare and Teaching Jobs, Nourish the Workplace, Staffordshire Research School, Step Up Network CIC and The Diary Toolkit), whilst enjoying a lunch from local provider, Five Star Caterers – thank you to Michelle for a fantastic service and to Hannah Wilson who recommended the provider. It was lovely to connect and check in with many of our attendees during this time and to see the fantastic conversations and networking taking place.

After all our workshops, we held our networking and feedback sessions. This was sparked with our view of how we continue the conversation and how do we return to our roots as a network rather than becoming an events company – thank you to Tim Mobbs who has sparked this interest, conversation and thinking through his recent blog posts.

We then returned altogether for our closing remarks, this was our opportunity to thank and celebrate all those people who attended our event but also supported the organisation of our event too.

It was a wonderful day. I personally have now felt very empowered ready for Monday morning to go about and make a difference in education, and in particular educational leadership. Thank you to everyone who supports the work of Step Up.