Professor Lesley Saunders

Professor Lesley Saunders is a visiting professor at the Institute of Education, University of London, a research fellow at the Department of Education, Oxford University and an associate of the Leadership for Learning Network at the Faculty of Education, Cambridge University.   

She has been an educational consultant and has research expertise in the area of teachers’ professional development, school improvement and self-evaluation, and the management of systemic educational change. She has also been a senior policy adviser at the General Teaching Council for England, where she designed and implemented the organisation’s research strategy.

As principal research officer at the National Foundation for Educational Research, Lesley built an extensive portfolio of work for a variety of clients, as well as taking a short secondment to the World Bank to create a set of online resources on school and teacher effectiveness internationally.

Lesley is also an award-winning poet, having received the Manchester Poetry Prize in October 2008. This was its inaugural award and it is now the second largest prize in British poetry.