Head to Head with Christine Cunniffe and Michelle Catterson

Monday 28th April 2025, 12 – 1pm

Join the live discussion here at 12pm: YouTube Link

Topic – How to Prevent a Lost Generation of Geniuses

This week, we welcome a very special guest, Dr. Tej Samani, Founder of My Performance Learning.

Join Michelle Catterson and Christine Cunniffe for a powerful and thought-provoking conversation that explores one of the most pressing issues in education today: why some students succeed while others, often silently, fall through the cracks—even in the same classrooms, with the same teachers.

Dr. Samani brings insights from over 250,000 pupil assessments and direct support to more than 30,000 students across the UK. His ground-breaking research—peer-reviewed by four leading academic journals, including the Centre for Educational Neuroscience at Birkbeck—uncovers the real, often ignored reasons students disengage and underachieve.

In this session, Dr. Samani explains why boys are disproportionately underachieving, how disengagement is linked to attendance and behaviour, and what schools can do to reverse these trends. He’ll share the two measurable and teachable data points that can radically transform outcomes, along with practical strategies that boost motivation, resilience, and academic performance. Most importantly, he introduces a framework that helps schools identify potential before it disappears.

In a time of rising mental health challenges, persistent attendance issues, and widening attainment gaps, this talk offers a much-needed reset. It’s not about more pressure or policy—it’s about truly understanding the underlying causes of student struggles and learning what we can do next.

Whether you’re a school leader, educator, policymaker, or parent, this live conversation will inform, challenge, and inspire. Tej will also be joining our curriculum conference on Wednesday 30th April at LVS Ascot to pick up the conversation.

Headteachers and curriculum leaders can register here:
https://lnkd.in/eqU6eXVk