Pupils Wellbeing Prize

With over 20 years of experience, Jo leads Howden’s education, student, and not-for-profit division. With a focus on education, wellbeing and the public and third sectors, Jo has acquired an extensive knowledge of their unique challenges, and is passionate about supporting young people with their mental health and wellbeing.

Empowering and inspirational speaker, entrepreneur, educator, and television personality, Baasit Siddiqui left his role as a full-time teacher and now combines his experiences working in TV, business, and 10 years as an educator to support students in realising their potential and recognising the wealth of opportunities available to them.

You can read more here: https://baasitsiddiqui.com/

Radha is the medical expert for BBC Radio 1’s daytime show, Life Hacks, and a regular contributor to BBC Radio 5Live’s weekly Mental Health Clinic show. She has also broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 2 championing mental and emotional wellbeing. She co-presented the Life Hacks BBC Sounds podcast discussing mental health and life challenges and was the sole presenter of the ground breaking CBeebies show, Feeling Better, which highlighted the importance of helping and talking to young children about their feelings. Radha has appeared as an expert on BBC’s primetime evening programme ‘The One Show’ and their daytime BBC Morning Live Show.

She was the medical expert for The Sex Education Show on Channel 4 and Make My Body Younger on BBC Three, makes regular appearances on BBC Breakfast, ITV and BBC News, as has featured as medical expert on the daytime show ‘Live with Gaby’ on Channel 5 as well as ‘Chasing the Saturdays’ on E!. Radha has written for The Guardian, MSN Health & Fitness, The Huffington Post and the online platform Having Time and featured on Apple News. She is a weekly columnist for The Independent, The i newspaper, contributes to a monthly column for Psychologies magazine alongside the Mental Health Foundation and is a columnist for BBC Science Focus magazine.

Find out more here: https://drradha.co.uk/

Jason Elsom’s early career centred around internet innovation – leading some of the most progressive early ‘dotcoms’ to launch the UK’s first free internet service and first home broadband. At 32, Jason turned his heart to education, becoming a teacher of ICT, secondary school Head of Faculty, and then senior leader in Further Education.

More recently, Jason joined Robert Peston’s social mobility charity, Speakers for Schools, which he scaled through the pandemic from being a charity of eight colleagues to almost 160, delivering inspirational talks from 1,500 societal leaders such as former Prime Ministers and ministers, corporate leaders, actors, sports personalities and more, life-changing work experiences from the likes of Google, Spotify, the Bank of England and around 900 other employers, as well as National Teen Book Club, and the Inspired youth volunteering programme.

As a passionate educator, leader, and father to a blended family of eight, Jason understands the importance of parental participation in every child’s education. Joining as CEO of Parentkind, the federated charity whose Parent Teacher Association members make up 5% of all UK charities, and 1% of all donations, Jason continues to champion the role of parents in successful educational outcomes.

Jason also sits on the advisory councils of the Foundation for Education Development and The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and is a Trustee at Cauldwell Youth.