School Advisory Board Information

School Advisory Board Information

The School Advisory Board (SAB) serves as the local advisory body squarely focused on providing insight into the experiences of pupils, parents, staff and the wider community that can’t be obtained in any other way.  This includes:

• Identifying whether the Board members and the senior management team of Speech and Language UK’s understanding of the school matches their ‘lived experience’;
• Providing feedback on the school’s priorities, vision, ethos and strategic direction;
• championing of the school’s achievements;
• developing local links to the community for learning, development and employment;
• communication of messages back to the senior management and governance; and
• most importantly, whether pupils, parents and staff feel safe and happy.

If you would like access to the SAB meeting minutes, you may request a copy from the Clerk.  Clare Bass clare.bass.clerk@gmail.com

Overarching legal responsibility for the school lies with the Board of Speech and Language UK Services Ltd, through the Education Committee.

The members of our School Advisory Board are:

Sian James- Chair

Sian worked at PiXL for 12 years - the UKs largest education leadership network. Her roles at PiXL included Head of Operations, Head of People and Head of People and Growth. She was also an active member on the board of Directors. Prior to working for PiXL Sian enjoyed a successful 10-year career working for Hays Education. 

Judith Humphris

Judy is a long-time employee of Proctor and Gamble in healthcare and enjoys balancing a full-time global career with family life in Surrey with her three children. She brings an impartial and alternative perspective to the governing board at Meath, as well as an understanding of the challenges and needs of the pupils informed by her mother-in-law, who worked as a speech and language therapist at a local special school.

Kalpana Patil

Kalpana is a children’s surgeon. She looks after babies before birth right through childhood till adolescence. She is a consultant paediatric urologist (looking after problems of kidney bladder and genitalia) with 30 years of experience as a surgeon. She has now retired from the National Health Service as a consultant paediatric urologist in Evelina London Children’s Hospital, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation trust London. She continues to see patients privately in London at The Portland Hospital for Women and Children and The Cromwell Hospital. Her experience as a mainstream school governor prior to joining Meath School in September 2019 was in Hoe Valley Academy School in Woking for 18 months.

Lizzy Bovill

Lizzy Bovill, mother to Alex and his sister Emily. Alex is 6 and has been at Meath for two years. Alex was diagnosed with global development delay aged one and now has a diagnosis of Developmental Language Disorder. Alex eventually started at Meath, as his first school, in the equivalent of his reception year. Alex was non-verbal and an able Makaton signer. He now has early speech. The school has developed not only his language but his broader communication, independence and confidence. Emily, is 8 and attends our local mainstream primary school in Surrey. She learnt to sign alongside Alex, registered as a young carer and Alex's greatest advocate.

Lizzy is a working mother with nearly 20 years in the NHS as the Director of strategy for a GP Federation in North West London. She has spent nine years working at Board level and has a reputation for advocating and ensuring patient and family's feedback, and involvement in decisions about their care, are heard and acted upon at the highest levels. Many will recognise Lizzy as an active parent at the school, but also on the local SEN groups, enabling parents to navigate their way through the EHCP, school application and transport hurdles as well as supporting new parents during their transition to Meath.

Juliette Squadrani

Juliette is a Chartered Accountant with experience both in practice and in industry; in the UK and Australia. Juliette is currently a stay at home mum. She has two children and her eldest attends Meath school. Juliette is passionate about advocating for her daughter and maximising her potential, despite her difficulties.

Ash Ruddy

Ash Ruddy is mother of two, with her eldest attending Meath School. Her son joined Meath School in his reception year. In addition to patient and parent advocacy skills developed during her son's extremely premature beginning (24 weeks'), she has fifteen years of global consumer product sales, team building and strategic business consulting experience.  

Amy Carlse

Amy has a professional background in corporate legal services in both the UK and NZ. Currently, Amy works for a Charity supporting at risk families facing international family law matters. She also sits on the Speech and Language UK’s Policy and Development Committee which looks at the impact of the Charity’s work in nurseries and schools and  how to prioritise and change government policy in speech and language for young people and children. Amy has a young child with a speech and language disorder and is passionate about maximising children’s access to quality and targeted early intervention support to face the challenges those with speech / language needs have. 

Lorna Gough

Lorna first worked at Meath 30 years ago as part of the residential team before going on to do teacher training. Having worked in several different school, she re-joined the team at Meath in 2020. With 25 years of teaching experience, mostly in Early Years, Lorna is passionate about ensuring children get the best start to their educational journey.

The members of our Education Committee are:

Sue Gregory, Chair of the Education Committee

Sue has decades of experience in the primary phase and was a headteacher for almost 12 years. Following secondment to a local authority Sue was appointed as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMI) in 2000. While at Ofsted, Sue led teams of HMI, developing inspection frameworks, policy, guidance and training materials across early years, schools and children’s centres. Sue held a number of leadership posts at Ofsted, including director responsibility for inspections, schools and early years. During her years as a director, she liaised with the Department for Education, national agencies, ministers and members of the House of Lords.

Sue retired from full-time work as an Ofsted Director and HMI at the end of December 2013 and is now working part-time as an independent education consultant.

Ann Gross, Trustee

Recently retired from the civil service following a distinguished career including the last 17 years in senior positions in the Department for Education and prior to that 16 years in the Department for Health.  Ann was responsible for strategy and policy on education for disadvantaged children, SEND reforms, mental health, children in care, the Child Poverty Unit and Sure Start Children’s Centres.

Dr Judy Clegg, Trustee and Chair of SAB for Dawn House School

Dr Judy Clegg is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Human Communication Sciences at the University of Sheffield, UK. She trained as a Speech and language therapist at the University of Manchester and completed a PhD in developmental language disorders at the University of Nottingham.

Judy is the Director of Professional Learning overseeing the clinical degree programmes in speech and language therapy. Her research interests focus on the developmental trajectories and outcomes of children with language and communication needs, the impact of social disadvantage on children’s language and communication development, the complex co-morbidity between children’s social disadvantage, their developing language and communication and their behaviour and mental health, and evaluating the effectiveness of interventions designed to facilitate children and young peoples' language and communication abilities. Judy is also co-editor of the journal, Child Language Teaching and Therapy. Further information can be found at www.sheffield.ac.uk/hcs/staff/clegg.

Jane Harris, CEO, Speech and Language UK

Jane is an experienced and energetic charity sector leader, with 15 years’ experience influencing public policy, building new audiences, and increasing income, raising the profile of and support for third sector organisations including the National Autistic Society, Leonard Cheshire Disability and Rethink Mental Illness.

As an experienced charity leader, Jane has spent her career raising the profile of issues that impact on people’s lives through influencing public policy, building new audiences and increasing income generation. She helped to measurably change public perceptions of mental health and autism.

Louisa Reeves, Director of Policy and Evidence, Speech and Language, UK

Louisa is a speech and language therapist with 30 years experience of working to support children and young people with speech, language and communication needs.

She has been involved in a number of large-scale projects at Speech and Language UK, developing evidenced solutions for speech, language and communication needs.  Her work includes leading on the development and evaluation of our Early Talk Boost and Talk Boost KS2 language interventions and the Tots Talking parent intervention for 2 yr olds. She is also experienced in promoting and facilitating multi-agency working to support children at all ages through Speech and Language UK's Place based approach.

Neil Maslen, Director or Education, Speech and Language UK

As the senior educationalist in the organisation, Neil’s role is to ensure the very highest quality education in our two schools and provide sector intelligence and professional guidance to work across the organisation that requires educational input. He is also the safeguarding lead for the organisation.

Neil has worked in education for over 20 years, which includes 15 years as a senior leader and headteacher and more recently as a school improvement lead in a large multi-academy trust. His experience spans both the primary and secondary phases and he has supported schools with a range of Ofsted judgements. In addition, he has facilitated on a range of National Professional Qualifications, such as the NPQML, NPQSL and NPQLT.

Majella Delaney, Principal, Meath School

Majella is a qualified Primary school teacher who taught in Ireland for seven years before moving to London to gain more experience and challenge herself in her field. She has taught in a range of urban and rural schools in both mainstream and special education. She is also a qualified SENCo and has completed the National Professional Qualification for senior leaders and has a range of experience in middle and senior leader positions.

Before joining Meath school, she was Vice Principal for Inclusion in a large mainstream school with specialist resource provision for Speech, language and communication which gained accreditation as a centre of excellence for Inclusion and is currently a flagship school for inclusion. She joined Meath in September 2020 as Deputy Headteacher and was appointed Principal in October 2022.

Jenny McConnell, Principal, Dawn House School

Jenny is a speech and language therapist and joined Dawn House School in 1993 having worked in the NHS for 6 years. Jenny helped to design the collaborative working model that we use today to meet the academic, social and language needs of our children so effectively.

Jenny later became a Speech and Language Therapy co-ordinator in school and then Head of Therapy. During this time Jenny gained further leadership qualifications and was appointed Principal in 2017. Jenny is passionate about ensuring that children with speech, language and communication needs get the support that they need.