Geoff Dean   1970-1974

Original Source:  http://www.shapingeducation.com/2.html Geoff Dean Shaping Education For The Future My Personal Profile

Geoff was born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, but brought up in Ipswich, Suffolk, attending the Northgate Grammar School for Boys. Following teacher training at Alsager College, and a degree from Keele University he began his teaching career in an English department at Wellingborough Grammar School,, before becoming Head of English at an upper school in Suffolk, where he was later Senior Teacher and Head of Sixth Form in 1984. He became Deputy Head at Sharnbrook Upper School in Bedfordshire in 1985, teaching English, drama and media. Geoff introduced, established and led the broad entitlement Creative Arts programme, which became the background to the school’s eventual Media College status. Geoff became the English Adviser (later LEA Inspector, and Ofsted inspector) in Oxfordshire in 1988.   He was appointed English Adviser to Cambridgeshire in 1997, moving on to Milton Keynes in 1999, where he was a School Improvement Adviser, responsible for literacy and English, G&T pupils and personalisation, before taking early retirement in 2008, and running his own consultancy.

Geoff has taught English, drama and media studies, and was a senior examiner for AQA A level Media Studies. He is the former Chair of the National Association of English Advisers, chaired the English panel at the National Academy of Gifted and Talented Youth at Warwick University, and served on The National English Board, in the Prime Minister’s Assessment Office. He has written six books: Challenging the More Able Language User (1998/2001), Teaching Reading in Secondary Schools (2000), Teaching English in the Key Stage 3 Literacy Strategy (2002), Teaching Grammar to Improve Writing and Reading in the Secondary School (2003) and Improving Learning in English(2004) – all published by David Fulton. English for Gifted and Talented Students was published by SAGE in 2008. These publications are supplemented by a variety of chapters in the books of others, and professional magazine articles. He leads many courses and speaks regularly at conferences, mostly on his specialist subjects of ‘more able pupils’, Assessment for Learning, Learning, Personalisation and Literacy.

In semi-retirement Geoff has established a consultancy (see www.shapingeducation.com ) and is in classrooms, teaching as often as possible in both primary and secondary schools, across the country. He believes that we need a much clearer vision of the way education should be developing in the information age, and that the whole system has suffered from an excess of politicking. He thinks that learners are too dependent on their teachers, and that they will only come to true independence through more personalised provision, in a mature assessment for learning culture.

He is an avid film fanatic, piano player, singer, enjoyer of industrial archaeology and traveller, and an enthusiastic reader of texts for young people.