Rt Hon Baroness Morris
Pro Vice-Chancellor Sunderland University and Chief of the Strategy Board at the Institute of Effective Education, University of York.

Estelle Morris was elected to Parliament as Member for Birmingham Yardley in 1992. Formerly a teacher in the West Midlands, Baroness Morris taught for 18 years in an inner-city comprehensive school in Coventry.  She also served as a Councillor on Warwick District Council for 12 years, for eight of these as Labour Group Leader. 

She moved to the Whips Office in 1994, where she served for one year, before moving to Labour’s Frontbench Education Team as Shadow Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools and Early Years.

After the 1997 election, she was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for School Standards in the new Labour Government and in July 1998 she was appointed Minister of State for Education and Employment and she became a Privy Councillor in 1999.

Lord Mitchell
Chair of the e-Learning Foundation

Born in 1943, and married with three children, Lord Mitchell has supported the e-Learning Foundation as a Trustee from its inception. He was Chairman of Syscap plc, an IT service provider until August 2006. Elevated to the peerage in 2000, he has sat on the Science and Technology Select Committee and campaigns on technology in education and foetal alcohol syndrome.

David’s involvement with PTAs began when his wife was Chair of the PTA at the Primary School attended by their children. He was recruited by NCPTA in 1998 to restructure the charity and increase the focus on services to its then 11,000 (now some 13,500) member associations. 

In 2001 David was invited to become a Trustee of the e-Learning Foundation; he has also chaired the Finance Committee for most of his tenure as a Trustee. David is also a member of the National Judging Panel for the Teaching Awards Trust, a member of the School Meals Review Panel set up by DfES, a member of the Administrative Council of the European Parents Association (EPA) and a past member of the General Teaching Council for England.

Alisdair Cameron, ACA
Finance Director, British Gas Residential

Alisdair Cameron is a leading Chartered Accountant and Finance Director for British Gas, part of Centrica plc, a FTSE 100 company. He is also a non-executive director of the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals.

Ian Carrel 
Chief Executive of the Avance Group

The Avance Group is a £16m, 1,000 employee Business Process Outsourcer. Previous experience includes senior roles with Bertelsmann, a global media and entertainments business and Convergys Corporation.

Prior to that Ian spent several years as a Management Consultant with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and has also worked for IBM. Ian is married with 3 children and is a keen supporter of Bath Rugby Club.

Wendy retired as a Head in December 2003 and is continuing to work as a DfES consultant and as an Associate Director for the Specialist Schools Trust.

Robert Marsh
Director of Fundraising and Communications at the charity Combat Stress

Immediately prior to that he worked at Epsom College and Harrow School in fundraising and development roles. His earlier career includes qualifying with a PGCE, and a tour in Bosnia with The Light Dragoons.

Diana Laurillard
Chair of Learning with Digital Technologies at the London Knowledge Lab, part of the Institute of Education, University of London.

Her main role is to lead research on e-learning, and to build productive collaborative projects between the Lab, educators, the digital media industry, and policy-makers. Her work focuses on theory-based design of learning and teaching methods and resources, learners’ conceptions and misconceptions and approaches to learning, flexible learning activity design tools for teachers, and cost-benefit modeling for the introduction of e-learning.

Professor Laurillard previously held a three-year term as Head of the e-Learning Strategy Unit at the UK Government’s Department for Education and Skills.
From 1995 to 2002, she held two terms of office as Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the Open University. She has been a member of the Visiting Committee on IT at Harvard University, and a member of the Dearing Committee on Higher Education for the UK Government. This work has been recognized through her honorary degrees from the University of Abertay, the Open University of the Netherlands, and the University of Brighton. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Honorary Fellow of University College London.
Her book ‘Rethinking University Teaching’ has been widely acclaimed, and is still used as a set book in courses on learning technology all over the world.

John has extensive executive experience encompassing Chief Executive, General Management and Sales Management roles, working and living in various parts of the world. He has also served as a Vice President of Compaq Computer Corporation and Digital Equipment Corporation in the past.

Lord Willis

Until the last election Phil Willis was the Chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee and the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Harrogate and Knaresborough. Phil became the first Liberal Democrat leader of Harrogate District Council in 1990, two years after joining it. He also served on North Yorkshire County Council from 1993 to 1997. In 1997, he became the first Liberal MP for Harrogate since 1906. He was a member of the Education and Employment Select Committee until November 2000, and is a vice-chairman of All-Party Groups on pluralism in education and further and adult education. He chaired the group on mobile communications and was treasurer of the All-Party Group on medical research.

A former Leeds headmaster, Phil Willis was principal Education and Employment spokesman in Charles Kennedy's "Shadow Cabinet", from 1999 to 2005, after being Further and Higher Education spokesman as deputy to Don Foster. His special interests include special education needs and inclusion in education. He is a keen supporter of Leeds United FC.