Dr Tony Breslin

Dr. Tony Breslin is Chair of the charity Human Scale Education, Director of the consultancy Breslin Public Policy Limited and Visiting Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. He is also a member of the National Community Cohesion Panel, a Trustee of Speakers Trust, a Non-executive Director at Arc Theatre for Change and a Vice-president of the Association for the Teaching of the Social Sciences.

Between September 2001 and August 2010, Tony was Chief Executive at the Citizenship Foundation, the independent education and participation charity, and prior to this, he was General Adviser, 14-19 Education, in Enfield, North London.  Tony is an experienced teacher, trainer and examiner and a qualified Ofsted inspector. He has published and spoken widely, in the UK and overseas, on education and participation issues.  His latest book, Teachers, Schools and Change is to be published by Trentham later this year and follows Developing Citizens, a collection of essays co-edited with Barry Dufour, published by Hodder Education in 2006.

He is currently embarking, with colleagues, on an edited collection that critically explores the concept of the Big Society from a progressive perspective and is working on the establishment of a new education think tank, Transform Foundation. 

Tony contributed to the Battle of Ideas in 2008, taking part in a debate on the importance of Citizenship Education, and has acted as a judge for the Academy of Ideas’ Debating Matters programme.

 Related Sessions

Saturday 1 November 2008, 1.30pm Henry Moore Gallery
From the classroom to the voting booth


 Publications

Teachers, Schools and Change (Trentham, 2011)


 Festival Buzz

"Participating in the Battle was a little like entering a Bombay train at rush hour - it's a plunge into a swirl of wildly differing notions of how people should arrange themselves in a really tight situation. When you eventually emerge, you find that you're in a different place from where you started - and that you've been thoroughly energised from the journey. I can't wait to take the trip again next year."
Naresh Fernandes, editor-in-chief, Time Out India