The Commission Team

The Commission

The Commission into Countering Online Conspiracies in Schools is funded and supported by the Pears Foundation.

In establishing the Commission, Pears Foundation’s aim was to explore the issue and produce something that would be of use to schools and the wider sector. They have, at all times, respected the independence of the commission and its research findings.

The Commission is co-chaired Sir Hamid Patel and Sir Trevor Pears and made up of a group of experts from the education, youth, media, legal and academic sectors.

Co-Chairs

Sir Trevor Pears CMG

Pears Foundation, Executive Chair

Sir Trevor Pears is Executive Chair of Pears Foundation, establishing the Foundation alongside his brothers Mark and David to fund organisations and projects working to deliver progress on key issues affecting the wellbeing of people in the UK and all over the world. The Pears family has given more than £500 million to charity since the Foundation was established. Sir Trevor is a Director of the William Pears Group, the Pears family’s property business. He was made a CMG in 2011 and was awarded a Knighthood for services to philanthropy in 2017.r

Sir Mufti Hamid Patel CBE

Star Academies, CEO

Sir Mufti Hamid Patel is the Chief Executive of Star Academies. He has led the trust since its inception. He is passionate about the highest of ambition for children and young people from the most disadvantaged communities across the country, and this vision has guided the philosophy of the trust and his own work in particular. Widely recognised as one of the UK’s leading educational voices, Hamid was made a CBE in 2015 and awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2021.

Commissioners

Amy Braier

Pears Foundation, Director

Amy Braier has been Director of Pears Foundation since 2012, having previously worked in policy roles at the Greater London Authority and the Antisemitism Policy Trust. She works closely with Sir Trevor and the Pears family to help them achieve their philanthropic vision, leading the Foundation’s operations and professional team and overseeing a varied portfolio of programmes and grants. She is also Chair of Trustees of the Miscarriage Association.

Helena Brothwell

Director of Education at Windsor Academy Trust

Helena Brothwell is the Director of Education at Windsor Academy Trust.
Helena is a frequent contributor to discussions of best practice across England’s educational landscape and is an experienced teacher and former Principal. She has previously worked as Education Director at Ormiston Academies Trust and Head of School Improvement at David Ross Education Trust.

Carolyn Bunting

Internet Matters, Co-CEO

Carolyn has been leading Internet Matters since its launch in May 2014. She has a wealth of marketing experience in senior positions at Sky and Vodafone, which provided pivotal experience in reaching out to parents. With two school-age children of her own, she is passionate about ensuring children can enjoy the internet safely.

Professor Arthur Chapman

University College London, Professor of History Education

Professor Arthur Chapman, FRHistS, FHA, EdD, MPhil, MA (Cantab.), PGCE, is Professor of History Education and Head of Department, Curriculum Pedagogy and Assessment at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, and coordinator of IOE’s History in Education Special Interest Group. Professor Chapman is an editor of several academic journals and a frequent contributor to global history education discourse. Outside History education, Arthur is a founder member and co-lead of IOE’s Curriculum and Subject Specialism Research Group and has worked as a member of both the research and teaching teams in the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education. In 2018-20 he co-led curriculum research and development for ODHIRH/OSCE and UNESCO on Addressing Antisemitism Through Education.

Gareth Conyard

Teacher Development Trust (TDT), CEO

Gareth Conyard is CEO of the TDT. Between 2003-2022, Gareth worked at the Department for Education on a range of policies from early years to higher education. Most recently, he led the development and delivery of the Early Career Framework and reformed National Professional Qualifications. He also spent two years as an Education Adviser at the Department of International Development, focusing on girls’ education and multilateral investment.

Smita Jamdar

Shakespeare Martineau, Head of Education

Smita Jamdar is Partner and Head of Education at law firm Shakespeare Martineau. She is a recognised leader in her field, specialising in constitutional, governance and regulatory advice that helps educational institutions thrive in a rapidly changing landscape. She has helped institutions to innovate and develop, to widen their reach, build institutional resilience, and deliver the best outcomes for students and other stakeholders. Smita has also been recognised in the Legal 500 as a leading individual in education.

Chris Morris

Full Fact, CEO

Chris is an award-winning journalist and CEO of Full Fact. Prior to joining Full Fact in October 2023, Chris was the BBC’s first dedicated fact-checker on air and online, pioneering fact-checking on mainstream outlets through his development and leadership of BBC Reality Check.

Ndidi Okezie

Strategic Advisor

Ndidi Okezie OBE is an executive leader with over 20 years’ experience driving transformational change across education, youth, government, and corporate sectors. She has served as CEO of UK Youth, Executive Director at Teach First, and Vice President at Pearson PLC,. Ndidi is a strategic advisor on strategy, social impact, and systemic change. She serves as a Board Advisor to Sky and is a Trustee of the Southbank Centre.

Professor Dame Alison Peacock

Chartered College of Teaching, CEO

Professor Dame Alison Peacock is CEO of the Chartered College of Teaching. Prior to becoming CEO of the Chartered College of Teaching, Professor Dame Alison Peacock was Executive Headteacher of The Wroxham School in Hertfordshire. Her career to date has spanned primary, secondary and advisory roles. In 2018, she became an Honorary Fellow of Queen’s College, Cambridge, one of the first ever female Fellows admitted. She is also a Visiting Professor of both the University of Hertfordshire and Glyndwr University.

Melanie Renowden

NIOT, CEO

Melanie has been the Chief Executive Officer of the National Institute of Teaching (NIoT), the new specialist higher education institute for the teaching profession, since its foundation in 2022. Melanie has spent nearly 30 years working in education. Most recently she was an executive director at Star Academies. Prior to this, she was the CEO at Ambition Institute, an Education Director at Business in the Community and has also held trustee and governor roles across schools, multi-academy trusts and education charities.

Under Melanie’s leadership, the NIoT recently launched the Centre for Digital Information Literacy in Schools. The Centre, which has been generously supported by the Pears Foundation, will deliver a national programme to equip educators with the knowledge, confidence, and tools to teach and lead effectively in an age of misinformation.

Rachel Sylvester

Political Editor at The Observer

Rachel Sylvester is the Political Editor at the Observer. She started writing about politics in 1996 and was a lobby correspondent on The Daily Telegraph before becoming political editor of The Independent on Sunday. She joined The Times in 2008 and has since chaired both the Times Education Commission and the Times Health Commission. Rachel is currently chairing The Times Crime and Justice Commission which aims to address the most urgent issues facing the police, prisons, courts and victims of crime.

Sara Sinaguglia

Deputy Headteacher

Sara Sinaguglia is a Deputy Headteacher, teaching history, religious education and politics. She has provided the Commission with the invaluable perspective of a frontline teacher and won a silver award in 2019 for Teacher of the Year in a Secondary School at the Pearson National Teaching Awards. She holds an MA in Applied Educational Leadership from the UCL IoE Centre for Educational Leadership and is a graduate of the Beacon School programme from the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education.

Jolanta Lasota

Chief Executive of Ambitious about Autism

Jolanta is Chief Executive of Ambitious about Autism, including the School Trust. She Chairs two sector infrastructure bodies – Autism Education Trust and the Autism Alliance. She is a Trustee of UK Youth. Her career includes Director roles in national voluntary sector organisations, including I CAN and the Governance Hub (a national body set up to support the governance of the third sector).

Sam French

Assistant Director, the Harris Federation

Sam is an Assistant Director for the Harris Federation, a multi academy trust of 55 primary and secondary schools working across London and Essex. 44,000 young people are taught in a Harris school. In addition to working closely with a cluster of primary schools, Sam leads on the curriculum for all of the primary academies.

Advisory Board

The Commission is also supported by the expertise of an Advisory Board, drawn from Pears Foundation’s grantees, consisting of civil society leaders with expertise across a range of relevant fields.

Ali Amla, Solutions Not Sides

Julie Bentley, Samaritans

Rozina Breen, Bureau of Investigative Journalists

Sharon Booth, Solutions Not Sides

Linda Cowie, The Linking Network

Jessica Deighton, Anna Freud

Professor Stuart Foster, UCL Centre for Holocaust Education

Meg Henry, The Linking Network

Dr Carol Homden CBE, Coram

Dilwar Hussain MBE, New Horizons in British Islam

Callum Hood, Centre for Countering Digital Hate

Sinead McBréarty, Education Support

Dr Jacqueline Phillips Owen, South London and the Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

Dr Andy Pearce, UCL Centre for Holocaust Education

Catherine Roche, Place2Be

Mark Rusling, National Holocaust Centre and Museum

Michael Samuel MBE, Full Fact

Danny Stone MBE, Antisemitism Policy Trust

Becca Weighell, Fair Education Alliance

Dr Daniel Wehrenfennig, The Center for International Experiential Learning

Dr. Glenn Bezalel, Deputy Head Academic, City of London School

Jeremy Hayward, Academic, IOE

Dr. Rob Nash, Head of Psychological Research at the National Institute of Teaching at NIOT

'Research Team

Ed Dorrell

Partner, Education Practice at Public First

Ed is a Partner at Public First. Ed plays an important role in all aspects of the Commissions’ wider strategic work across research, policy and advocacy.

Before taking up this role at Public First, he was one of the most experienced and respected education journalists in Britain. He was deputy editor of the Times Educational Supplement (TES) for seven years, a role he combined with being comment editor and before that he was news editor for five years. He has also written for most national papers including the Guardian, the Times, the Telegraph and the Independent.

Sally Burtonshaw

Director, Education Practice at Public First

Sally is a Director in Public First’s Education Practice where she leads work on schools policy. Sally leads on all aspects of the Commission’s research, policy and advocacy work.

At Public First, her recent work includes the future of state funded tutoring in schools and colleges, the attendance crisis, and a review of the collaborative outreach programme, Uni Connect. She also leads Public First’s work on the Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes. Sally joined Public First from London Higher where she was Head of Policy and has a PhD at UCL. She began here career at Dyke House College in Hartlepool.

George Ryan

Associate Director, Education Practice at Public First

George is an Associate Director at Public First, working across strategic communications and education, skills and levelling up policy. He leads on the Commission’s media and communications. George draws from a diverse background in journalism and public relations. As a news reporter, he covered the local government beat in the regional press, skills policy at the Times Educational Supplement and politics when working as a parliamentary reporter for the Press Association during the Brexit negotiations and the Covid pandemic. George was a further education and apprenticeships specialist at UCAS before joining the Association of Colleges to lead media relations.

Michael Kane

Policy Manager, Education Practice at Public First

Michael Kane is a Policy Manager in Public First’s Education Practice. At Public First, he works directly on the Commission for Countering Online Conspiracies in Schools and works across policy, advocacy, research and communications to support the project. Before joining Public First, Michael worked in policy and advocacy for a school attendance charity and worked for a political monitoring company, working with clients from across the education and skills sector. He holds a first-class honours degree in Politics from Newcastle University and a distinction in Political and Legal Theory MA from the University of Warwick. In his spare time, he helps Fair Game, a group that represents 35 men’s professional football clubs in England, with their Advocacy and Policy work and plays for an amateur football team in South London.

Seb Wride

Partner, Public Opinion at Public First

Seb Wride is Partner at Public First, leading the Data and Polling practice. For the Commission, Seb oversees the Commission’s quantitative work. Seb has led the polling team at Public First since 2019, and has run quantitative research projects spanning over 30 countries. His previous projects have included work for the Wellcome Trust and CaSE on how to run a successful campaign for R&D, a number of projects on public opinion on Net Zero and the environment including building new segmentations based on environmental attitudes, and research into the impact of the pandemic on mental health. Prior to joining Public First, Seb completed an MPhil in Psychological research, and his work on the relationships between music preference and personality was published in JPSP in 2022.

Jules Walkden

Research Manager, Public Opinion at Public First

Jules Walkden is a research manager in the polling team at Public First. For the Commission, Jules leads the quantitative polling that the Commission has conducted. He joined Public First shortly after the completion of his BSc in politics with economics from the University of Bath, as part of which he completed a year in industry working for the data and consulting firm Kantar. Whilst at university, he received high distinction for his extended dissertation where he researched the role of disinformation in the political violence that occurred during the 2021 Capitol riot. Jules is a keen footballer and musician, having performed at multiple gigs in London.

About Pears Foundation

The Pears Foundation is an independent family foundation that invests over £20 million each year in a wide range of charitable organisations and causes. The Foundation is known for its relational approach, building long-term relationships with grantees and giving unrestricted funding and support beyond grants. Pears Foundation’s work is broad-ranging, spanning education, mental health, poverty alleviation, social action, civic engagement, social cohesion and the intersection between these issues. The Pears family has given more than £450m to charitable causes since the Foundation was established.

About Public First

Public First is a policy, research, and strategy consultancy. We help governments, global companies, start-ups, institutions, and foundations tackle major public policy challenges.

Public First is a Company Partner of the Market Research Society and members of the British Polling Council. Our team has advised Prime Ministers, business leaders, and entrepreneurs – but our work is always grounded in the views of real people in real communities. We test public opinion around the world and turn insight into actionable policy. We are part of SHGH, which holds the companies Public First, Stonehaven and Robertsbridge.

About Star Academies

Star Academies is one of the UK’s highest performing multi-academy trusts, with a diverse network of primary and secondary schools across the country.

Star is a values-based organisation that works to improve the life chances of young people in areas of social and economic deprivation to help them succeed at the highest levels of education and employment.