I am a professional. What does that mean? I am an educator, a teacher, a leader. I am a researcher. As I continue on my doctorate journey, I hope to be able to articulate what it means to be a professional in the field of education and how I can influence the education system.

I've been a teacher for 35 years - in the London boroughs of Hillingdon, Croydon, Sutton, and now in Surrey. I became a headteacher in 2001 and a National Leader of Education in 2012. I've led a Teaching School, believing that we can influence our education system through supporting teachers. I am now a Chief Education Officer in a large multi academy trust in the south of England.

We have a fragmented education system that is heavily criticised by the media and constantly meddled with by politicians. Our schools are challenged by underfunding and external pressures within a framework of accountability (quite rightly - it's public money) that does not work for every school.

My initial proposal for a research question in 2019 was: What are effective governance structures that support school improvement in a multi-academy trust? This has inevitably changed over the years as I have worked on my research. Follow my journey through the EdD. I hope there may be something on this site that is of use to you, and I hope that I will get some feedback on my academic thinking that will benefit my research.

I am proud to be a research student at the Institute of Education (IoE) at University College London (UCL). The Education EdD is a research degree for experienced professionals from education. It is a part-time degree, normally 5 - 7 years. There is an assessed taught element, an Institution Focused Study (unique to the UCL IoE EdD programme) and a thesis, making a distinct contribution to the knowledge in the field of study.

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I'd be very interested to hear from those in #UKEdGovs, opinions of senior leaders in schools (below the headteacher) joining local governing boards of other academies in their MAT as members of that board in their own right. More detail: clark.education/expert-leade...

— Alex (@alexc7.bsky.social) 2024-10-25T15:15:10.192Z

RSS Feed from Pat Thomson’s blog – patter

  • feedback on academic writing 21st May 2025
    Research suggests that doctoral researchers often don’t understand supervisor feedback on their writing. When they get their text back with its red/blue tracked changes and comments, they don’t always get what they are being asked to do.  I remember that a doctoral researcher once told me that she had spent hours trying to work out […]

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  • Is your PhD supervisor neurodivergent? 30th April 2025
    Recently, some colleagues and I released a paper about the experiences of neurodivergent PhD students. It’s a systematic review of the literature to date, which is currently under review, but available via pre-print here. Doing this paper was an exercise in mixed feelings. It was an absolute joy to work with my colleagues, who knew […]