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If you had Glastonbury envy, there’s still time to embrace the festival spirit at Wellington College next week.
After a two-year pause, the world-renowned Festival of Education returns to the beautiful grounds of Wellington between 7-8 July. With the event cancelled in 2020 due to Covid, and purely online in 2021, there’s palpable excitement in the education community at the prospect of bringing people back together to build connections and share ideas.
This year the College will welcome over 5000 educators and 400 leading speakers, across nearly 300 sessions. Attendees are travelling from as far as Australia, the US, China, Africa, Denmark, France and Portugal to define and evolve the education debate from early years through to higher education.
The first Festival of Education in 2010 was the brainchild of Sir Anthony Seldon, former Master of Wellington. His vision was to create a vibrant professional development event for teachers towards the end of the academic year that felt and looked completely different from anything else they would attend.
At the heart of the Festival is an understanding that learning should be inspiring, engaging and fun and as a result the vibe is more akin to Hay or Glastonbury than a stuffy conference centre. Large marquees with starlit ceilings, street food, hay bales and outdoor entertainment, all spread across 400 acres create a relaxed, buzzy atmosphere. It’s a place “where those who inspire find their own inspiration.”
An Evolving Festival
In its inaugural year in 2010, the Festival attracted around 500 delegates and was predominantly attended by educators from the private sector. By 2019, which was the biggest festival to date, around 80% of attendees were from the state sector.
Today’s festival is operated by LSECT (Learning & Skills Events Consultancy and Training Limited) who initially came on board as the media partner for the event and have focused on promoting it widely to state schools and FE colleges. This year over 2,000 tickets have been given away to the state sector via a lottery system and there is a tiered pricing model for paid tickets.
In 2021, the organisers took the ambitious decision to run the event exclusively online due to the pandemic. Over sixteen thousand people pre-registered for the virtual Festival which was completely free of charge. Over 400 sessions were broadcast over a two-week period and the recordings were available for educators to view for 12 months afterwards. Demonstrating the huge appetite for conversation in the global education community, viewing figures vastly exceeded expectations with nearly fifty-four thousand individuals accessing the content after it went live.
What’s on at this year’s Festival of Education?
An exciting new development for 2022 is a partnership with WWF UK who are taking over the huge atrium at the heart of the Festival and converting it into a Sustainability Summer Fete. WWF UK have invited 20 other small environmental charities to come and showcase their work through interactive experiences for teachers that they can take back to their classroom.
WWF are also hosting a sustainability content strand in partnership with SEEd (Sustainability and Environmental Education) with over 30 sessions including DfE talking about their new Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy and a keynote from Peter Duncan, actor, director, writer and ex Chief Scout.
For the first time Ofsted have taken their own marquee venue and will be providing 11 helpful and insightful sessions across the two days focusing on the key areas of their main objectives. Ofsted Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman will give her end of year keynote on Friday 8th.
LGBTed, WomenEd and BAMEed will be running their own strands of content focused on inclusivity and equality across all areas of education. The BBC are returning as a festival partner with sessions including news presenter Ros Atkins (famous for his viral ‘explainer’ videos) on how teachers can help secondary school students understand topical news stories.
The Times Education Commission have an exciting strand which includes high-profile keynotes from Sir Anthony Seldon; Sir Tim Smit, co-founder of the Eden Project and children’s writer Michael Morpurgo.
Cath Murray from LSECT has put together a series of hot topic debates taking place in the College chapel. Some, including “Why don’t girls choose physics and what can schools do about it?”, have the potential to get quite lively.
Other highlights include keynotes from Prof. David Olusoga OBE; Jassa Alhuwali on belonging in a divided world and actor, presenter and climate activist Cel Spellman on greening your school’s curriculum.
The global future of the Festival
Planning for 2023 has already begun and the Festival of Education is expected to be even bigger and better than ever. The future of the event extends well beyond Berkshire with the long-term aim to have an international Festival wherever there is a Wellington, including in Shanghai and Bangkok next year. Wellington UK will support these events as part of our commitment to facilitate the education conversation globally.
Take a look at the Festival of Education agenda for 7th and 8th July 2022.
You can also find updates from the Festival on Twitter and Facebook
