Bob Bates was a Senior Executive in the Civil Service for twenty years. During this time, he also worked as a staff trainer and coach and mentor to people with disabilities. He then set up his own Management & Training Consultancy (The Arundel Group), which celebrates its 25th anniversary next year. His work as a management consultant covered a number of local and central government projects as well as working as a trainer with major UK private sector companies. In the late 1990s Bob started a lecturing career, during which time he gained two Masters Degrees in Management and Education and a PhD in Education. He has taught over 1000 teachers and trainers on graduate and post-graduate programmes at two universities. He currently manages and teaches on City & Guild Teaching Award, Certificate and Diploma courses in a Community CollegeThe first edition of Learning Theories Simplified was Bob’s third book. His first book, The Little Book of BIG Management Theories, written with Jim McGrath, was on W.H, Smiths’ non-fiction best sellers list for nearly a year, is being translated into fifteen languages, including Japanese and Arabic, and was chosen by the Chartered Management Institute as the CMI’s Practical Management Book of the Year for 2014. His second book, The Little Book of BIG Coaching Theories, published in February 2015, was also a best seller and has been translated into German and Thai. His fourth book, A Quick Guide to Special Needs and Disabilities, was published by SAGE in 2016 and his fifth book, Leadership Theories Simplified, was published by SAGE in 2017. Bob shares his time these days between writing, working voluntarily for a charity that promotes health and education in the Gambia, researching into offender learning and homelessness and teaching Adult Education Teachers.Bob can be contacted through his web site bobbates.co.uk (here you get an option to pick Research or Bad Bob Bates – please choose the former) or email saddlers9899@aol.comAndy Bailey has been an education practitioner for nearly 50 years. He was the Head Teacher of a primary school in the West Midlands for 26 years from 1983 until 2009. From 2000 until 2005 he was an External Advisor for the national programme for the Performance Management of Head Teachers. He was a School Improvement Partner employed by the Birmingham and Walsall Education Authorities to work within a number of schools between 2006 and 2011. From 2012 until 2015 he was an inspector for Ofsted working as a Lead Inspector in 2014 and 2015. Since his retirement from his head teacher’s post he has worked as a consultant in a number of primary schools in Birmingham and Walsall. Andy has also written or co-written a number of educational publications for practitioners and pupils in England and Wales and the Caribbean and has lectured to teachers, managers and advisers in a number of local authorities and universities in England and also in the Caribbean.Derek Lever has been a practitioner in education for over 50 years. He has taught pupils from 4-16 years of age, was an Acting Head Teacher in three rural primary schools in the 1970s and Head Teacher of two large, urban primary schools from 1980 to 1993. He has run Head Teacher training programmes and also spent twelve months as Head of a Learning and Resource Centre. He has been an External Examiner and an Associate Lecturer at two Universities. In 1993, he was appointed as Walsall MBC’s schools’ inspector for mathematics 4-18 and subsequently a general school’s inspector before becoming Deputy to the Chief Education Officer in 1997. For six years, he was an Inspector for Ofsted and helped establish a Consortium of local education authorities who conducted inspections and trained inspectors on behalf of Ofsted.He has Bachelor and Master’s Degrees in education and added the award of Doctorate at Loughborough University in the 1990s. In collaboration with university colleagues, he has had a range of articles published and a book, ‘What do Primary School Headteachers Really Do?’ (a LUDEO publication in 1997). He has spoken at international conferences in various parts of the world, including Austria, Denmark, Romania, Portugal and the USA and also arranged and conducted Study Visits for colleagues in/from several countries including Malawi, France and New Zealand. In 2011, he was contracted by a prominent UK company to collaborate on a review of the New York City school effectiveness programme.
