ASCL Cymru Annual Conference 2025

Education opens doors and broadens horizons; it shapes lives and brings confidence. In essence, education brings opportunity, and this is the theme for this year’s ASCL Cymru Annual Conference.

As leaders in education, you prepare pupils for the vast range of possibilities that lie ahead, and give opportunities to pupils, often where there have been none. From developing lifelong skills, harnessing a love of literature, and shaping social skills, all in education, especially school and college leaders, understand the need to deliver opportunity to the next generation, for one day soon, these pupils will be the agents of opportunity for others.

Keynote speakers will include: 

• Lynne Neagle MS, Cabinet Secretary for Education 
• Representatives from ESTYN, Qualifications Wales and WJEC
• Pepe Dilasio, ASCL General Secretary 
• Jo Rowley, ASCL President 2025-26
• Neil Foley, ASCL Cymru President 2025-26
• Claire Armitstead, Director of ASCL Cymru
• Innovating Minds, trauma-informed interventions for schools
• Smart Curriculum, building efficient, effective and ethical curriculums
• The School for Hard Knocks, providing alternative provision.
• Step Lab, creating meaningful and effective personalised CPD
• Mark Burns, author of The Learning Imperative
• Kat Thorne, The Morning Gamechanger, building positive habits through one small change 
• Mike Nicholson, Director of Progressive Masculinity
• Catherine Hulme, Director, Leadership Edge building sustainable coaching cultures
• Chris Ingate, ASCL Conditions of Employment Specialist: Pay

Additional CPD
Colleagues in Wales may also be interested in joining our webinar Delivering a mission-centred curriculum amid increasing financial pressures on 14 January 2026, and delivered by Chris Jones, Founder and CEO of SMARTcurriulum.