About Me

David Monis-Weston MEng (Oxon) PGCE ALCM FCCT
Note this is now my married name, I’m also known under my former name David Weston.

Connect with me:

David Monis-Weston (2020)
David Monis-Weston (2024)

Since April 2024, I’m now Artificial Intelligence Lead for Purposeful Ventures and, from September 2024 to May 2025, I was co-Lead for the Maths Horizons curriculum and assessment review. I’m the Founder and former Chief Exec of the Teacher Development Trust, the national charity for effective professional development in schools and colleges. I also the Chaired of the Teachers’ Professional Development Expert Group at the UK Government’s Department for Education during 2015 and 2016. Since then I’ve been a policy advisor, working on the Early Career Framework, the National Professional Qualifications (NPQ) frameworks and also the Headteacher Standards. Most recently (from January 2025) I’m a member of the Expert Steering Group of the review of the NPQ Frameworks.

I studied Engineering & Computing Science at Lincoln College, Oxford, with a particular interest in coding, robotics and control systems, after which I went straight on to do a Postgraduate Certificate in Education, also at Oxford. During university I was also working outside term time as a software developer for BioMedCentral.

After a training year teaching in Oxfordshire, I taught Maths, Physics and ICT in two state schools in the South-East of England, and was leading data management for the last five of my ten year teaching career. During the last few years of my teaching career I began some consultancy work around data and professional development, including a role setting up a new data management award for the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) and some teaching on the PGCE Mathematics course at Brunel University and the Teach First (Science) course run from Kings College & Canterbury Christ Church.

During my teaching career I became seriously ill with a rare condition called Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis. This led to me taking some time out and having a life-saving liver transplant in February 2009 after many months of battling for my health. Since then I’ve become an advocate for organ donation and try to spread the word and tell my story.

My increasing involvement in professional development and teacher learning led to a sense of frustration at the poor state of ongoing training for teachers and I coded and launched GoodCPDGuide.com in late 2011, a ‘TripAdvisor for teacher development’, followed by setting up the Teacher Development Trust in early 2012. This was an exciting time as the charity began with just an idea and no financial backing. I soon realised that it wasn’t going to be possible to combine my role as Chief Executive of the Trust with teaching and reluctantly took my last classes through to their exams in May 2012 and then left to become full time at the charity. This coincided with the formal launch event which was held at the Department for Education’s offices in London.

Since that time the charity has gone from strength to strength. The Teacher Development Trust is the national charity for effective professional development in schools and I was privileged to work alongside a fantastic team there as well as with amazing trustees, advisers and schools. The charity has been re-shaping the view of teacher professionalism and transforming school improvement processes based on the research in to the most effective practices. Since 2021, the organisation has become one of the UK government’s Lead Providers for National Professional Qualifications, training thousands of school leaders every year through 20 different regional centres, at levels from middle leadership through to executive leadership across schools. From 2023, I promoted my incredible Director of Education to be my Co-CEO, with me becoming Co-CEO (Research & Innovation), sharing leadership of the organisation, until March 2024 when I announced that I would be stepping down. This also coincided with the announcement of a truly wonderful Ofsted Outstanding report that TDT achieved at that time.

I’ve been increasingly interested in Artificial Intelligence. With my background in Engineering and Computing, I’ve been fascinated by the potential of generative AI. I helped to co-author a new guide on AI for UK school leaders alongside US nonprofit ISTE. I also helped TDT to pilot Teacherverse.AI, an approach to embedding AI-powered simulations in professional development courses for teachers, a project that was selected as one of 6 global projects by the Salesforce organisation’s philanthropic accelerator programme in 2023. I’ve also spoken about AI at several events, including the World Education Summit, for Pearson/Eedi and at the Salesforce World Tour. This led to me taking on a new role as AI Lead for Purposeful Ventures, with a remit to explore the potential of philanthropic funding to improve AI in education, particularly focused on maths and particularly in the UK. In November 2024, I published the report Exploring EdTech and AI in Maths Teaching for Purposeful Ventures.

This AI work also connects to my growing work in maths education, where I was also co-lead, along with Dr Helen Drury, of the Maths Horizons Project. Across a period of 9 months, we did a detailed analysis of England’s approach to maths education and publish a very detailed, full report that set out a number of recommendations for both government and system in how to improve maths education.

Following this, I am now leading Purposeful Ventures’ work, not only in AI but also in maths teacher recruitment, retention, deployment and development, to take some of these ideas forwards.

I have written extensively for a number of media outlets including The Guardian, the Times Educational Supplement (where I also co-authored a series with Bridget Clay) — also a newer set of articles here under my married name, Telegraph, SecEd, Headteacher Update, Senior Leadership Today and Education Investor. I have also appeared on Sky News, Newsnight, ITV London, Channel 5 News and some national and local radio stations as well as having given a TEDx talk in the USA. I write a number of blogs (mainly on the TDT site) and post on social rather more than I should under the name @informed_edu – a relic of a name I invented to do a bit of consultancy around data.

During 2017 I co-wrote a book alongside my (now former) colleague Bridget Clay. Unleashing Great Teaching: the secrets to the most effective teacher development is a handbook for school, system and policy leaders about how to support and improve teachers in schools all over the world.

In 2021, I co-authored a paper with Bethan Hindley and Maria Cunningham on effective cultures of development within schools – A culture of improvement: reviewing the research on teacher working conditions:

My work has allowed me to build up very extensive contacts around the education and EdTech networks in the UK and increasingly around the world and I have been privileged to work with a number of politicians and think tanks of all political persuasions.

I’ve given hundreds of talks and workshops, both in the UK (including the Wellington Festival of Education, Education Show and ResearchEd National) and around the world (including in the USA, Brazil, Canada, India, Italy, Hong Kong, Malta and UAE).

In 2014 and 2015, I helped to bring together a coalition of organisations, teachers and other supporters to present a proposal to create the new Chartered College of Teaching. Working alongside the Prince’s Teaching Institute, the SSAT and the existing Chartered College of Teachers, we secured initial funding plus a promise of significant government funding, created a new teacher-led trustee board and set up the constitution. I stepped away from the organisation at that time, and was delighted to be appointed a Founding Fellow of the Chartered College in May 2018.

In 2014, to my surprise, I found myself in the middle of a rather nice viral media story after I tweeted a section of a letter from a student about my coming out at school back in 2011. As a reaction to that, I set up OutTeacher.org and now occasionally write, speak and comment on LGBT issues in schools.

I have been fortunate to have had periods in roles as governor at a brilliant primary and a secondary school and on a few different advisory boards of charities including the Chartered College of Teaching and the Teaching Awards Trust and I am currently an advisor to the Headteachers’ Roundtable. My great interests include teacher professional development (not surprisingly!), teaching, psychology, politics, data, physics and maths. I retain an enthusiasm for coding and technology having become reasonably proficient in coding in Ruby on Rails. Perhaps slightly more unusually I am/(was?) also a very proficient Latin American dancer having competed and trained for nearly 13 years (and even reached a ranking of 13th in the UK) although I no longer have the time, unfortunately.

Some work I’ve been involved:

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