Having trained as a secondary PE teacher at St. Paul's and St. Mary's, Cheltenham, England, I then taught for two and a half years in a secondary school.

Despite having said on completion of a teaching practice in a special school, 'I enjoyed working in the school but wouldn't want to do it full-time' I took on the significant challenge of becoming a PE teacher at an independent residential special school. The school catered for youngsters with a wide range of special educational needs with many of them having significantly challenging behaviours. During my five years there I became a class teacher and then a senior teacher responsible for a separate 16-19 unit. During my time here I also decided that as I was really quite enjoying working in Special Education I should become qualified and attended Birmingham University after work for a couple of years and gained a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in Special Education.

In 1996 I became a deputy headteacher of a maintained special school and in January 2000 I became Head of Addington School, which is one of the largest special schools in the UK. Addington caters for up to 220 pupils with MLD, SLD and PMLD many of whom have associated sensory, motor and/or behaviour difficulties including ASD. I was the first special school leader to be accepted as a Research Associate with the National College for School Leadership. The subject of my research 'Special Leadership' enabled me to visit and learn from a number of excellent leaders of SEN environments both in the UK and also in Australia. Just before leaving the UK to move to Australia Addington had an OfSTED inspection and it was extremely successful with it being described as 'a very good school with some excellent features', and I was very proud to be identified as 'an excellent leader' within the report. Since 2004 I have spent much time delivering Team-Teach behaviour support training in Australia and New Zealand as well as writing a range of articles and presenting on conferences on topics about behaviour, special education and leadership.

More recently I was successful in gaining a joint tender to deliver approaches to supporting students with challenging behaviour to staff in Hong Kong schools. I am also currently engaged in completing my Educational Doctorate into Leadership in Special School and Inclusion, as well as writing and adapting materials written by Bernard Allen for the Asia-Pacific region.

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