Developing Teachers Schools Academies
DTSA is established as a not for profit Charitable Incorporated Company and employs its own central team.
Please see brief biographies of the employed staff below.
Dr Deborah Outhwaite
DTSA CEO
I was appointed the DTSA Director role, back in April 2018. My priorities at DTSA have been to maintain and grow the charity to support education locally, as it has morphed away from being a large Teaching School Alliance (hence its renaming) in order to strengthen the provision of ITTE ready for the post 2024 changes. In addition, DTSA has continued to grow the Science Learning Partnership (SLP) for Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire through the help of our committed facilitators, to become an effective Science Curriculum Hub for the East Midlands. We work well with our partners in this area, and I am always happy to hear from people about how we can improve on both this and our teacher education provision.
I previously ran the MA Education programme at the Centre for Teacher Education, at the University of Warwick, and before that taught on a range of programmes at the University of Derby for eight years. I originally qualified as an 11-18 teacher, I taught in secondary education for 12 years prior to university teaching and was an A-Level examiner. My Education doctorate was on interdisciplinary learning and was completed in 2016.
I have been involved in Teacher Education for the last twenty-five years and sit on the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for the Teaching Profession and am a Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching; The Royal Society of Arts, and a Senior Fellow of the HE Academy. I am also a Fellow of CollectiveEd (at LBU), supporting high quality successful mentoring and coaching, and a Fellow at the Institute of Educational and Social Equity (IESE) advocating for a fairer society.
I am Chair of BELMAS www.BELMAS.org.uk (2023-2026), co-convening their Leadership Preparation and Development (LPD) Research Interest Group (RIG). I was previously an elected member of IPDA’s International Committee and have been both a Governor and a Trustee in an 11-18 Derbyshire comprehensive school and a MAT; and am currently a Member of the Trust of a secondary school that delivers the IB in Hertfordshire. I am also a local a Network Lead for @WomenEd East Midlands and am passionate about ensuring equity of access of senior posts in education to diverse groups.
Additionally, I am an EdD Supervisor at the University of Liverpool, where my students are educational leaders in full-time practice – in a wide range of countries including Japan, China, Canada, and the UAE. I externally examine EdD theses on a regular basis, and am the EdD Examiner for Staffs Uni 2024-2028.
Read more…
University of Liverpool – Research, publications, teaching and professional activities
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Contact Deb:
Strategic Queries – Deborah.Outhwaite@DTSA.org.uk
Anna Cummings, MSc
DTSA Director of Finance and Projects
Anna has over twenty years experience in the education and financial sector. With a background in teaching both Finance and Mathematics in Secondary and Further Education including winning awards from IPPM, World Skills and IAB for her personal financial accolades as well as her teaching.
Anna also works as an examiner for AQA at Secondary level on GCSE Mathematics and brings her expertise to DTSA.
Anna works full-time and manages all DTSA Finance and HR matters while also administering our STEM Science Learning Partnership programmes and courses.
Contact Anna:
Finance Queries – finance@DTSA.org.uk
STEM Queries – STEM@DTSA.org.uk
Lauren Derbyshire
DTSA ITTE Programme and Marketing Manager
Lauren qualified from Derby University in 2002 with a combined honours degree in HR, Business Management and Career Management. She has over 15 years experience in the education sector organising major events and conferences having started her career working in the Education CPD team in the Local Authority and progressed to being Programme Officer.
Lauren went on to help form Derby Schools Learning Partnership and develop all the back office systems that saw the partnership flourish before it developed to become DTSA.
Contact Lauren:
Hannah Barker
DTSA Marketing Officer
Hannah has worked in marketing and publishing for over 20 years and manages The Smallprint Company, the family letterprint business, is an Associate with The Fifth Sector, a strategic and economic development consultancy within the digital and creative sector, and Operations Manager for strategic arts charity Arts Derbyshire.
Hannah received a commendation for the Women in Leadership (Level 7) programme from University of Nottingham which she completed in Spring 2020 and has been a Parent Governor for a primary school and Parent Member of the Babington Children’s Centre Advisory Board.
Hannah has worked with DTSA since August 2017, originally as Events Administrator, and combines her business, events, marketing and production experience in her part-time role as DTSA Marketing Officer.
Contact Hannah:
Booking and Programme Queries – booking@DTSA.org.uk
Kelly Poole
DTSA Data Management Officer
Kelly has 15 years of experience in logistics, customs, and administration across various sectors, as well as involvement both with organising and volunteering at events within the UK. She is qualified with the UK Customs Academy but opted to move into roles that concentrated on customer success and administration in more recent years.
A large fan of completing CPD courses herself (with 23 certifications and counting), her role within DTSA is primarily involved in the processing of data that helps enable teachers to attend STEM courses and improve their own CPD opportunities.
She has worked with DTSA since February 2023 as their Data Management Officer.