The conference was held in the Queens Hotel in Leeds and was attended by 90 delegates from all over England. 38 of the delegates were refugee teachers.
Jonathan Ellis, the Director of Policy and Development from Refugee Council chaired the event and opened the conference at 10.45. This was followed by speeches from Fiona Prendergast and James Lee from Refugees into Teaching project and from Matt Mitchell from TDA (Training and Development Agency for Schools).
Four workshops were held before lunch and the delegates were given an option to attend one of them.
After lunch, three representatives from organisations around the UK gave presentations about schemes that are in place to support refugee teachers.
Refugee Teachers Network Co-ordinator, Eddie Ralston, gave an account of the new service that he is in post to develop. The new service will link providers of services to refugee teachers across the UK.
Conference delegates then split into strategic groups to discuss partnership working within each region and action-points for the Refugee Teachers Network to proceed on.
After the regional groups an afternoon panel discussion provided an opportunity for the delegates to ask questions to a panel consisting of the conference speakers.
The Mussanzi Family Choir, a family from the DRC who are based in Bradford, performed some traditional songs and closed the conference.
Find out more about the presentations and download pdf versions
Find out more about the workshops and download pdf notes
