Meet the team

The AlphaPlus Directors are:


Peter Burke

Peter Burke is the Chairman of AlphaPlus. Throughout the 1980s he worked in public examinations, first as Deputy Secretary of the Southern Regional Examinations Board and from 1986 to 1990 as Chief Executive to the Southern Examining Group, responsible for managing the introduction of the new GCSE examining system. He has been an independent consultant since 1990, and acts as an adviser to the DfES, the Skills for Life Strategy Unit, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) and their equivalent regulatory bodies in Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland (ACCAC, SQA and CCEA). He also acts as an adviser to the government in China on the development of Key and Basic Skills.  Recent commissions include research into the reliability in the assessment of NVQs, developing the model of assessment for Key Skills (including more recently research looking at innovation in the approaches in England Scotland and Northern Ireland), monitoring the impact of Key Skills, and leading the convergence project for QCA, looking at merging Key Skills and Skills for Life alongside the Embedding Project run by Barry Smith.

Gavin Busuttil-Reynaud

Gavin is a professional engineer with a successful track record with both start up and blue chip companies in the UK and the USA, joining AlphaPlus Consultancy as a Director in 2006.

Concentrating on the role of ICT in delivering value through innovation in learning and assessment, Gavin has worked on projects for a wide range of public and private organisations, including the UFI, the TDA, QCA, National Assembly for Wales (DCELLS), LTScotland, BECTA, JISC, and the BBC on topics such as; accessibility of e-assessment; the impact on regulation of qualifications arising from the use of e-assessment and the use of e-portfolios to demonstrate wider achievements of young people.  The common thread has been establishing effective partnerships between education professionals and the technical community to achieve innovation in teaching and assessment methods and tools.  Gavin is currently the project manager for authoring of the Qualified Teacher Status tests administered by the TDA and a member of the e-Assessment Association.

Jenny Gardiner

Jenny has a long history of delivering change and innovation within educational teaching and learning. She has recently completed her secondment to the Quality Improvement Agency (QIA) where as part of the Excellence and Innovation Team she was responsible for the design, commissioning and contract management of research projects and innovative programmes focusing on developing leaders and managers in the Further Education system. Having joined the AlphaPlus Board of Directors in October 2008, she brings a wealth of experience in teacher training and development, leadership and management, and innovative thinking to the team.

Jenny has worked in secondary, further and higher education, and has a sound knowledge and understanding of teaching and learning pedagogy, including e-learning practices.  She brings expertise and experience in leading course development and delivery to the team. In addition, she is committed and experienced in developing and supporting practitioner researcher, leading the evaluation of programmes and designing research projects. 

Her depth of expertise in Skills for Life related work will complement the research and evaluation experience she brings to this project. Through her project work, and previously working in a large FE college and ACL, Jenny has managed and delivered Skills for Life and Key Skills provision, has developed and delivered teacher trainer and train the trainer accredited programmes for Skills for Life (literacy, numeracy and ESOL) practitioners, developed on-line learning materials, and was a Lead Trainer for the original roll-out of adult literacy and adult numeracy core curriculum training.

Her strengths include facilitating effective and targeted stakeholder engagement and management, utilising many different approaches. This ensures the work she delivers has credibility with practitioners and wider stakeholder groups.  She is also a well respected project manager who has delivered a large number of high profile, highly successful educational projects.

John Hamer

John Hamer is the Vice Chairman of AlphaPlus. He was formerly a member of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI) of Schools in England. Amongst other activities as an HMI, he was an adviser to ministers and officials on curriculum and assessment; and was seconded to SCAA – now the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) - as Assistant Chief Executive managing the Key Stage 3 team.

Since becoming an independent consultant in 2000 he has managed and reported on a number of studies on aspects of good practice in the teaching and learning of Key Skills, and the integration of key and other generic skills into teaching and vocational training. His most recent work in this area has been on integrated approaches to teaching Key Skills in Business Studies and Information and Communication Technology, and in Construction. The two resulting booklets were published by LSDA earlier this year.  He also worked (with CDELL) on strategies for integrating Key Skills in the “Success for All” teaching and learning frameworks.

Anne Matthews

Anne Matthews is a research and training consultant with a background in teaching and curriculum evaluation. Following an initial teaching career in both secondary and adult education in the UK and overseas, she spent 15 years working for a department of Oxford University specialising in assessment before becoming an independent consultant. She has wide experience in assessment and training in both the educational and vocational contexts, and in accreditation and quality assurance of programmes and institutions. She was responsible for the development of her division as an Awarding Body for a number of high level NVQs, including Management and Project Management and led the development of a Validation Service for both educational and commercial organisations seeking external recognition and certification of their programmes.

Her consultancy work has included a wide range Basic and Key Skills projects for the DfES, CDELL and Granada Education as well as the development and assessment of NVQ Management candidates and the training of NVQ assessors. She has also contributed to a number of research and evaluation projects for QCA and CDELL.

For the last three years she was the project manager for the DfES Skills for Life Embedding Project, working with 20 SSCs and Awarding Bodies to embed Skills for Life in Vocational Qualifications. Most recently she worked on an extension to this project which looked at embedding Skills for Life into the first five Diploma lines of learning and was involved in two QCA projects concerned with the introduction and implementation of the Diplomas.

She is also a facilitator for the Comparability Studies developed for UCAS by the University of Oxford, Department of Educational Studies, designed to admit an increasing range of qualifications to the UCAS Tariff.

Barry Smith

Barry Smith has experience in education policy-making, implementation and practice having worked on several major education reviews, consultations and pilots at a national level for both the National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) and as a Principal Officer at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA).

His work as a consultant focuses largely on aspects of Skills for Life policy development and implementation, and Success for All.  His teaching experience spans both academic and vocational qualifications in the Further and Secondary sectors including publication of 8 text books.  Most recently, he has been the Project Director for the Embedding Project, funded by the DfES Skills for Life Strategy Unit, and Lead Evaluator for the evaluation of adult Initial Teacher Training for a DfES Standards Unit piloting program as part of the Success for All policy implementation.

Other work includes the development of the subject standards and qualification specifications for the adult Basic Skills teaching sector (Literacy, Numeracy and ESOL) at levels 3 and 4 of the National Qualifications Framework for the DfES, FENTO and QCA.  Other recent contract work has included several projects with QCA, LLUK, DfES (SfLSU and Standards Unit) and Improve Ltd (Food and Drink SSC). He has also written six Key Skills books for Longman Publishers (Number, Communication and IT) as well as two books on the Wider Key Skills (Problem Solving, Working With Others and Improving your Own Learning).

John Winkley

John is an experienced e-learning and e-assessment business manager with a track record of business growth in learning technologies.  He has specialised in developing innovative systems for education and assessment, working with a range of public and private sector clients through the four companies he has helped to build over the last 12 years: BTL Group Ltd, The Virtual College plc., 3Square Solutions Ltd, and AlphaPlus.

His consultancy work includes e-strategy projects for SQA (e-strategy, item banking, on-screen Higher Exams, the SOLAR project) Becta (Digital Content Strategy, The E-assessment Readiness Review, e-Portfolio Strategy, The Schools Open Source Programme), JISC (Expert Consultant to the e-Learning Programme, the e-assessment glossary, ePortfolio developments), QCA (various e-assessment development, delivery and regulation projects), Edexcel (accessibility), and the Driving Standards Agency (Driving Theory Test).

He is a member of the Chartered institute of Educational Assessors and a board member of the e-Assessment Association.

Education Consultant:

Anna Grant

Anna has a tripartite experience and skills base: project management, academic research and evaluation. Anna has held project management and support roles in a number of education and skills policy implementation projects, all of which have had a substantive ICT element. She has also undertaken and contributed to several successful research projects in the fields of education, sociology and politics. Her most recent research has been on the role of ICT in society, which linked in with a JISC funded study to explore the socio-legal implications of the proposed national Lifelong Learner Record and e-portfolios in FE and HE. Anna led the joint evaluation of two JISC projects and the evaluation of a HEFCE funded GMSA Advance project. As part of her research and evaluation work, Anna has organised and facilitated many workshops and focus groups, and conducted numerous semi-structured and in-depth interviews. Anna has also taught at undergraduate level and has been involved in education and skills strategy work at the metropolitan level (Greater Manchester).