New members of the Learn Sheffield Team

Learn Sheffield welcomes three new colleagues to the team as we start the new term:

Homaira Ibrahim has joined us as our new Race Equality Programme Manager. Homaira is part of the Policy and Democratic Engagement team in Sheffield City Council and is seconded to the Learn Sheffield team to support the work of the Sheffield Education Race Equality Working Group.

Helen Lane is well known to the team and was one of the authors of our independent evaluation last year. Helen has recently retired following ten years working for the North East, Yorkshire and Humber Region of Ofsted, most recently as Senior His Majesty’s Inspector and Assistant Regional Director. Helen brings a wealth of experience as a secondary senior leader, school improvement partner and system leader.

Steve Shaw also joins Learn Sheffield from a Senior HMI role. Steve joins Learn Sheffield after seven years as an HMI with Ofsted. Most recently, he was the senior HMI in Ofsted's national policy team for SEND and Alternative Provision. In this role, he was responsible for the Area SEND inspection framework, and for Ofsted's approach to the schools inspection of SEND and AP.

We also have a number of the existing team starting the new school year with new roles, including Sam Dunker who is now the Deputy CEO. These changes follow a re-structure and build our capacity to enable Learn Sheffield to take on further responsibilities, including relating to SEND and Inclusion in the coming months. We are currently working on a more detailed update for our members, to share later this half term.