Who are we?         

We have two full-time consultants  Bill Laar and Jackie Holderness dealing with various areas of primary education.  They each have their own specialist experience and skills.  We work either individually or as a team depending on the needs of each project. We are also involved in the writing and publication of  educational textbooks and teaching materials. For many years, we have worked with a wide range of respected publishers to create for children  and teachers Language Arts materials  that are  lively, challenging and child-centred. We have also written books for teachers and contributed to educational debates through articles and chapters.

Bill Laar.

Bill  was a Primary Head teacher before becoming an inspector/adviser. In this capacity he worked  for a number of local authorities, including: Birmingham and  Barking and Dagenham. He was:

• Senior Primary Inspector for Walsall,

• Senior Divisional Inspector with the Inner London Educational Authority,

• Senior Schools Adviser for Oxfordshire

• Chief Inspector and Acting Director of Education for  the City of Westminster,  London.

For over 10 years, Bill has worked as an educational consultant, with schools and teachers around the UK and overseas.  He is a Visiting Fellow at Oxford Brookes University and has worked recently with a number of Education Action Zones in the UK.

Interests: 

Bill’s main professional interests are: Management and leadership;  governance of schools; school inspection and self-evaluation; Creativity in education;  the use of narrative in learning; teaching  gifted and more able children; non-fiction skills development; teaching thinking skills; the teaching of reading, writing and poetry;  teachers’ continuing professional development:

Publications by Bill Laar:

Bill  has been a regular contributor to the Times Educational Supplement and has written books and materials for teachers, including :

“The TES Guide to Surviving School Inspection” (1995: TES/Butterworth/ Heinemann/ Harcourt. ISBN- 0750628014 )

 The “Literacy Files” series for teaching Primary Literacy (1996 : Stanley Thornes)

Jackie and Bill jointly wrote the OUP Parent’s Guide to Pre-School Learning (1999).

Jackie Holderness

Jackie has worked in primary education for over twenty years, (although she was originally trained as a secondary teacher). She gained a MA in Language and Literature in Education from the Institute of Education, London in 1985.)  Her teaching experience includes:-

• Class teacher and Language Co-ordinator of large primary school, the British school in The Netherlands, in The Hague
• Taught French and English as foreign/second languages.
• Deputy Head teacher, Oxfordshire LEA school.
• Senior Lecturer in Education,  Oxford Brookes University, Department of Education. 
• Course Leader of the OBU Masters’ distance learning /computer conferencing programme for schoolteachers in international schools.

Jackie  is a qualified schools inspector and a First Steps Literacy tutor. She  regularly provides In-service or CPD (continuing Professional Development) for  teachers at home and overseas. She is currently involved with several publishing projects, ranging from non-fiction and language arts programmes to ESL Big books.

Interests: Jackie’s main professional interests are:

EFL; ESL and bilingual education;  the use of story in learning; teaching  gifted and more able children; non-fiction skills development; family literacy, eg through the use of Storysacks; thinking skills; Philosophy for children; learning how to learn and accelerated learning ; the teaching of reading, writing and poetry;  teachers’ use of action research and continuing professional development.

Publications By Jackie Holderness:

Several EYL materials, including Start with Words and Pictures Activity Book (1985), Carousel (Addison-Wesley Longman, 1992) and  Top Songs Activity Books 1 and 2 (OUP, 2000)  A  recent Science series was aimed at the early years How? Why? What? (Franklin Watts, 2000).

She has written several ELT primary coursebooks  (Chatterbox :1990) Zoom/Cool : 2000, Best Friends (2001), & Zabadoo Plus  (2003) all published by OUP. Her supplementary materials for ELT teachers includes 100+ Ideas for Children,(1999) published by Macmillan- Heinemann.

Jackie has also published books for British teachers: Cassell’s Big Cross Curricular flip book (1988); Bright Ideas in English (Scholastic: 1989) ,  An Introduction to Oracy, with Cassell: 1998 and The Really Practical Guide to English: (Stanley Thornes,1999)

She has contributed chapters to books about Curriculum Provision for Able Children (Fulton: 2001); Managing International Schools (Routledge Falmer 2001) and Interpreting International Education (Kogan Page, 2003)

She is currently working on several projects, including a  cross-curricular non-fiction literacy programme LCP Non-fiction reading cards, ( LCP 2004) two ESL projects (Harcourt Ed: 2004),  a Caribbean Language Arts Programme (2005) and a KS1 Science series for Aladdin Books/Franklin Watts (2004-5)