Meet the team

The members of our core team are:

Pete Hrekow - Director

Pete Hrekow has worked with young people described as disruptive, disaffected and delinquent for more than 20 years in a variety of contexts. He is a qualified and experienced teacher and youth and community worker, having worked in mainstream secondary education, behaviour support, special educational provision and a large maintained youth centre. He has held senior management positions for many years including managing PRU provision, a Behaviour Support Service and as headteacher of a secondary special school for pupils with severe social. emotional and behavioural needs.

Pete has an established track record for promoting and developing multi-agency approaches and has extensive experience of delivering in-service training to a wide variety of professionals. He has been a tutor on the NUT CPD programme since 2001 and in this context, he currently delivers training on improving behaviour to over 500 teachers. each year. Pete has a Masters Degree in Education and specialised in the areas of inclusion, special educational needs and behaviour management.

Since becoming a consultant in 1997, Pete has provided advice and support for: individual maintained mainstream and special schools, pupil referral units; independent schools, local authority services; post-16 provision (e.g. Entry to Employment and FE Foundation courses). He has also worked on national development projects (e.g. Crime reduction in Secondary Schools and On Track) and has internationally, promoting inclusive practice in the Romanian vocational education sector.

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Marc Cattini - Director

Marc Cattini specialises in information management. He holds M.Sc degrees in Social Research and Computing Science, is a Member of the British Computer Society, an experienced project mangaer and qualified PRINCE2 Practitioner. He has significant experience in computer programming, database design and development, web application design and development and social research within both the public and voluntary sectors.

Since becoming a consultant in 2000 examples of his work include the Online Practice Learning Evaluation Tool for Skills for Care and Croydon Council's Human Resources and Organisational Development Website and it's bespoke Content Management System (opens in a new window). He has also developed a variety of bespoke managament information systems and undertaken a number of research projects in the Children's Services arena for a several local authorities and central government departments.

Prior to becomming a consultant, Marc held a variety of posts in local governmemt in the areas of research, education policy devlopment and special educational needs.

During 2008 / 2009 Marc worked closely with Mary Hrekow, one of our senior associates on the development of a new Provision Management software tool for SENCOs called Provision Manager

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Paul Howard - Senior Associate

Paul Howard has thirty years experience in education, having been a youth worker, teacher, lecturer, headteacher and since 1999 an education and training consultant. Throughout his career, Paul has had a particular interest in the education in mainstream schools of children and young people who have been deemed as having needs in the area of social, emotional and behavioural developmentand along-standing commitment to inclusive education.For 11 years he was head teacher of Newham's Behaviour Support Service and this has led him to explore alternatives to traditional constructs of special educational needs and educational failure. His recent practice has included:

  • extensive work on preferred learning styles, which he regards as a particularly powerful medium for achievement and growth and a more effective vehicle for differentiation than those based on ability levels
  • the development of training and support packages in the field of restorative justice in schools
  • consultancy for schools evolving as extended (full service delivery) providers

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Mary Hrekow - Senior Associate

Mary Hrekow began her career in mainstream schools and then specialised in the area of special educational needs. Over the past 30 years she has worked across all phases, in both special and mainstream provision. She has worked in Local Authorities as an advisor/inspector for special educational needs.

Mary’s work across mainstream and special provision has focused on curriculum development. She worked extensively with schools in the introduction of the original National Curriculum and was a member of the mathematics working group responsible for the first revision of the National Curriculum.

Mary has a particular interest in assessment and worked with central government departments responsible for developing the original End of Key Stage Assessments as a special educational needs consultant. She was responsible for developing and drafting the very first ‘special arrangements’ for pupils with special educational needs within the end of key stage assessments. More recently, she has worked with QCA on their revision of the P-Scales and was responsible for the redrafting and revision of the mathematics P-Scales and ran national conferences to consult with teachers on the review.

She was the Co-ordinator of SENJIT at the Institute of Education for 18 months and regularly provides training, through SENJIT, in various areas of special education. In response to changes relating to SEN and Disability issues. Mary worked with a team of architects and educational professionals to produce the DfES publication, ‘Inclusive School Design – Accommodating pupils with special educational needs and disabilities in mainstream schools.’

In recent years Mary has been working with mainstream and special schools developing Provision Management. This has involved working with individual teachers and small pilot groups of schools to trial and refine approaches to school self-evaluation for SEN. She has contributed materials to the Primary Strategy’s publication, ‘Leading on Inclusion’. Mary also works with a number of special schools as an accredited School Improvement Partner.

During the 2008 / 2009 Mary has been working closely with Marc Cattini, one of our directors on the development of a new Provision Management software tool for SENCOs called Provision Manager

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Debbie Collins – Principle Research Consultant

Debbie Collins has 18 years experience in the field of Social Research and holds an M.Sc degree in Social Research Methods, having worked at the OPCS (now the Office for National Statistics) and IPSOS RSL. She currently works part-time as a Research Director for the National Centre for Social Research, where she heads their internationally recognised Questionnaire Development and Testing Hub. During her career Deborah has been responsible for many large scale national studies across a variety of subject areas on behalf of a range of government departments.

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Steve Anderson – Principle Programmer / Database Administrator (DBA)

Steve Anderson has 17 years experience in information technology, including 8 years in the Office for National Statistics and 5 Years as a Database Administrator for the Houses of Parliament. Steve’s experience in working with and developing software to process, match and analyse large datasets make him an ideal core team member for the requirements of this project.

At OPCS Steve initially worked on the conversion of existing paper and pencil social surveys to computer-aided interviewing systems. He later developed new, wholly electronic data collection systems for some of the largest and most complex Government data sets.

Steve also built and managed the back office data handling systems used for analysis, reporting and data delivery. Steve's technical skills include Microsoft SQL Server RDBMS as database administrator and developer, Visual Studio (Visual Basic 6, FoxPro), Visual Basic for Applications (MS Access, MS Excel, MS Word), MS Internet Information Server and Active Server Pages, Apache Server, MySQL, PHP, Perl, HTML/XML and JavaScript.

As a consultant recent projects include an online reader registration system for the National Archives, a web-based notification system employing mobile WAP and SMS technology, and a website visitor tracking and reporting service.

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Liz Floyer- Associate Consultant

Liz Floyer began her career as a nursery and infant teacher in inner London, she then worked in schools for children with severe and moderate learning difficulties, and in pupil referral environments for 10 years. She subsequently trained as an educational psychologist and worked as a child psychologist for Child and Family Guidance services and later within Educational Psychology services. She also has an MSc in Organisational Psychology specialising in organisational analysis, assessment for selection and workplace stress.

Liz has worked as a trainer and behaviour consultant with Behaviour and Learning Management for the last seven years and is a Registered Trainer in Assertive Discipline and Coping With Kids and trains education "paraprofessionals" in behaviour management strategies. She has established herself as a lively, approachable and effective presenter and trainer. Her training and consultancy skills have been much in demand from schools and organisations needing her specialist expertise in relation to thinking and skills and cognitive education, as well as in behaviour management. She has worked with a number of specialist units over the long term to help them create behaviour and learning environments that are more positive, respectful and effective.

More recently, Liz has qualified as a Registered Trainer in Situational Leadership with the Blanchard Organisation and has delivered this programme to senior leadership teams within schools and Local Authorities across the UK.

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John Parrot - Associate Consultant

John Parrott is an experienced teacher and headteacher and has worked in mainstream and special schools for 25 years, mainly within the primary sector.John worked primarily with children and young people with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) in a range of settings and led and managed a day/residential special school for nearly 10 years. He has always been an active participant within his field of interest and is currently Chair of NAPLIC (National Association of Professionals concerned with Language Impairment in Children), a regional tutor on the Birmingham University Speech and Language Difficulties, distance education course and Book Review Editor of the professional journal Child Language Teaching and Therapy.

Since becoming a consultant in 2003 John has developed a varied portfolio of work which has included: being a specialist member of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal; carrying out independent reviews of local authority SEN provision; advising schools and training on the Disability Discrimination Act Code of Practice for Schools; working with SENJIT and training on Provision Management; acting as a professional advisor to ICAN, the children’s communication charity, as an accreditor of ICAN early years services and as a trainer on a range of language development courses; being a Registered Intermediary for vulnerable witnesses within the judicial process; and being engaged as an education consultant by a number of organisations including NASS, Symbol UK, the Shaftesbury Society and Afasic. John has recently become an accredited School Improvement Partner for Special schools and is working, in this capacity, with a number of schools.

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Dr Ruth MacConville

Ruth Mac Conville is a qualified and experienced teacher who has worked in a variety of settings both mainstream and special schools in the UK, Denmark and Cuba. She has held senior leadership positions in two inner city comprehensive schools and for the past nine years has been head of a specialist teaching service in a London Borough.Ruth has a particular interest in pupil voice and developed the Powerful Voices conferences for children which are now held annually in a number of LAs.

Ruth has an established track record on providing training and presentations to a wide variety of professionals. Ruth has a masters degree from Cambridge University and her doctorate research was in the area of social inclusion. She has a particular interest in the role and development of friendshipskills. She is the author of several books and her latest publication addresses the teaching of happiness and wellbeing.

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Tim Simon – Associate Consultant

Tim graduated from London Guildhall University in 2001 with (Hons) Degree in Multimedia Systems and Design. Tim has a background in Audio Visual production with several productions to under his belt. Tim has produced and presented radio shows for local community radio as well as producing music and promotional videos.

With over 6 years professional experience in Multimedia production, and working with some of West Ends leading Post production houses Tim has a creative eye for design and the ability to share clients visions and manage expectations to fit the budget.

As contractor a large amount of his career has been in creating and editing web content for clients. Starting his career in education sector Tim has worked for London Guildhall University and Goldsmith’s University. After fulfilling a dream working with Children in care homes Tim returned to IT industry to work for private sector companies which lead to a position at Amazon.co.uk. More recently Tim worked as a Web Editor for North Somerset Council. Tim has just finished a contract designing a collaborative site for King’s College Hospital NHS Trust and King’s College University. In the project Tim designed the site and produced most of the graphics implemented in the design. Not only was this design developed from a single design of the then homepage Tim delivered the training for a new Content Management System.

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David Escott – Associate Consultant

Graduate of Bath Art College, with a BA Hons in 1992, David has worked within all areas of the media in graphics, film, video and music. His clients include ‘BBC, The Body Shop, MaCann Erikson, Virgin, The Prodigy, Vivienne Westwood, London Records’ and many more.

David works in all areas of website design from conception through to production and training and has been creating websites since 1995. David is at home working in all aspects of web design and is skilled at understanding client’s design goals. As an example of this flexibility compare the cutting edge concepts used for the likes of The Prodigy (www.theprodigy.com with the clean effective interaction and design used in information based sites used such as for the New Direction Training Centre (www.newdirection.org.uk).

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Page last updated 30th April 2009