Ian McNeilly is the Director of the National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE), the professional body for all those working in English education in the UK. A former secondary school teacher with 15 years classroom experience, Ian has worked in a variety of educational settings both in the UK and overseas. As part of the latest review of the National Curriculum, Ian was invited to be part of a small team advising the government on the development of the English programmes of study. He also took part in a comparison study of international equivalents of A level English Literature. Both his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees are in Literature and he is a published author of teachers’ resources on Shakespeare, Dickens and Austen.