David Monis‑Weston

AI, Teacher Development, Maths, Talent Development

LGBT+ advocacy Organ donation advocacy Surrogacy legal reform advocacy

Head of EdTech and Head of Maths Teachers at Purposeful Ventures. Founding Chief Executive of the Teacher Development Trust. Writer, advisor and educator.

Role
Head of EdTech & Maths Teachers, Purposeful Ventures
Based
London, UK
Credentials
MEng (Oxon) PGCE ALCM FCCT
Also known as
David Weston
01 About

What connects the work.

I’m interested in the systems that help people learn: classrooms, technologies, professional cultures, curriculum, assessment, and the decisions leaders make around them.

My work has moved from teaching maths and physics, to building a national teacher-development charity, to advising on education policy, to exploring how AI might improve — or distort — learning.

I sit on the Department for Education’s Expert Steering Group for the National Professional Qualifications framework review. Alongside the education work I advocate for LGBT+ teachers, for organ donation and for surrogacy legal reform. I live in London with my husband Ryan and our son.

02 Work

Current & recent work.

Head of EdTech and Head of Maths Teachers Purposeful Ventures

Leading philanthropic work on EdTech and maths teacher recruitment, retention, deployment and development.

Apr 2024 – present

Co-Lead, Curriculum & Assessment Review Maths Horizons

Nine-month review of England's approach to maths education, co-led with Dr Helen Drury.

Sep 2024 – May 2025

Expert Steering Group NPQ Framework Review

Advising the national review of National Professional Qualifications for school leaders.

Jan 2025 – present

Judge, Accelerating K-12 Learning track Tools Competition

Judging tools that assess and accelerate K-12 learning outcomes and strengthen teachers' instructional practice. A programme of Renaissance Philanthropy, organised by The Learning Agency.

2025

Judge, Cognitive Development & Mathematics track Ed-Technical

Judging “Education in 2028”, a forecasting competition on how AI will have changed education by the end of 2028. Run by Ed-Technical, incubated by Purposeful Ventures.

Dec 2025 – Jan 2026

Advisor Headteachers' Roundtable

Supporting a leading group of school leaders shaping the profession's voice.

Ongoing
03 Writing

Selected writing.

All posts
May 2025 · Full report · Maths Horizons

A nine-month national review, co-led with Dr Helen Drury, setting out recommendations for government and system on how to improve maths education in England.

Read the report
04 Media

Press & broadcast.

All media
05 Book

Unleashing Great Teaching.

A handbook for school, system and policy leaders on how to support and improve teachers, co-written with Bridget Clay (2017). Translated into practice by schools and systems around the world.

Unleashing Great Teaching book cover
06 Labs

Small experiments — some shipped, some private, some still tinkering.

AI projects.

01 Tool

Markdown viewer

A single page that opens a Markdown file and renders it for reading — contents rail, printable to PDF. No server, no upload: the file never leaves your browser.

Live
02 Campaign

Surrogacy Law Debate

A site for Surrogacy UK that helps constituents invite their MP to the surrogacy law debate. The letter is built in the browser; no personal data leaves it.

Live
03 Product

FuelOptix

Finds the cheapest fuel along a route by total trip cost — the refill plus the extra fuel burned on the detour — rather than raw pence per litre.

Live
04 Open source

AI-tell checker

A linter for formulaic, unsupported and machine-residue patterns in prose. It reviews the writing, not the author — findings are revision prompts, never evidence of who wrote something.

  • Deterministic and stdlib-only — no model in the loop, so every finding is reproducible and auditable
  • Mechanical residue: chatbot artifacts, sycophancy, attribution leaks, hidden zero-width and bidi unicode
  • Tiered vocabulary — some words flagged on sight, others only when they cluster in a paragraph
  • Run detectors: repeated sentence skeletons, question stacks, three sentences opening on the same word
  • Structural rhetoric: antithesis, throat-clearing, announced candour, colon-dramatic reveals
  • Stylometrics: sentence-length uniformity, punctuation scarcity, Latinate density, abstraction-stacking
  • Findings suppressed when a number, citation or URL shares the sentence, to keep false positives down
Ongoing
05 Build

Home assistant

A private, voice-first assistant running at home — routines, family calendar, and light home-automation, LLM in the loop.

Personal
06 Hardware + code

Wi‑Fi App Restorer

Bringing orphaned Wi‑Fi speakers back to life by re-implementing the abandoned vendor apps with a small local bridge.

Ongoing
07 Practice

Website design

Designing and building small editorial sites end-to-end — including this one. Calm typography, fast pages, no nonsense.

Ongoing
07 Path

A route through teaching, research, policy, charity leadership, technology and system improvement.

A short history.

Full bio
Classroom
2002–12 Teacher of Maths, Physics & ICT
Building institutions
2011 Launched GoodCPDGuide.com
2012–24 Founder & Chief Executive, Teacher Development Trust
2023–24 Co-CEO (Research & Innovation), Teacher Development Trust
Policy and professional learning
2015–16 Chair, Teachers’ PD Expert Group, DfE
2018 Founding Fellow, Chartered College of Teaching
AI, maths and system reform
2024– Head of EdTech and Head of Maths Teachers, Purposeful Ventures
2024–25 Co-Lead, Maths Horizons Curriculum & Assessment Review
2025– Expert Steering Group, NPQ Framework Review
08 Work with me

Hundreds of talks across nine countries.

Topics include AI in education, maths reform, teacher development, school leadership, responsible technology and LGBT inclusion.

UK · USA · Brazil · Canada · India · Italy · Hong Kong · Malta · UAE

Salesforce World Tour
Wellington Festival of Education
ResearchEd National
Pearson / Eedi
Sky News · Newsnight · ITV · Channel 5

Advisory

Clear thinking for trusts, charities, funders, companies and education organisations working on AI, EdTech, maths, teacher development and system improvement.

Writing & research

Reports, essays and briefings that make complex education evidence, policy and technology questions usable.

Speaking & workshops

Talks and workshops for education, policy and technology audiences — especially where AI, maths, leadership and professional learning meet.

09 Contact

Let’s talk.

Open to a small number of advisory, writing, research and speaking engagements — particularly around AI in education, maths, teacher development, school improvement and responsible technology.

© 2026 David Monis-Weston informededucation.com