Global sports star David Beckham OBE is joining Sky as an ambassador, it was announced today.

The long-term partnership will see Beckham play a leading role across the breadth of Sky’s work to support grassroots sport and encourage participation across Britain and Ireland. He will also feature in adverts to promote the unrivalled range of sport and innovative services offered by Sky.

As a national sporting icon, David Beckham is an inspirational role model to millions of young people. In his role as a Sky ambassador, he will help to use the power of sport to change lives through the successful Sky Sports Living for Sport initiative which is delivered in partnership with the Youth Sport Trust. Now in its tenth year, this free initiative uses the life-changing stories and expertise of athlete mentors to inspire young people to learn new skills and improve their lives. Around 30,000 young people a year participate in the programme, which reaches one third of all secondary schools in Britain and has just launched in Ireland.

Some of the comments we hear most from Middle and Senior Leaders in schools today include the desire to ‘raise my confidence in the leadership role’ and ‘think about the bigger picture to make change happen in my school.’

Time is your most precious resource and we understand that Leaders in your school need to get the most out of their learning. Quality, bespoke Middle and Senior Leaders Development Programmes from BlueKiteCoach provide you with confidence that the learning your teams tackle has been specifically designed to inspire, engage and motivate. Indeed, it will be a talking point in your staff room, for all the right reasons, long after your learning event.

Do you have one class that you just can’t seem to build any rapport with? Is their behaviour difficult to control?

Here are some great tips from the world of professional speaking that will give you more certainty, confidence and conviction when it matters most. David Hyner delivers student and staff training workshops on presentation skills, and the use of gesture and body language to gain rapport and manage the classroom.

The audience or students need to “see, hear and feel” that what you are telling them is true for them to engage with you.

Leading educational assessment software developer Lucid Research has recently enhanced their support information available for teachers via the company website.

Kevin Thomas, Managing Director, explains: “We have revamped large sections to make it easier for our customers to find the information they require. In particular, we have received tremendous feedback for our new video tutorials section to help with interpreting the results from our assessment software.”

The new tutorials give examples of Lucid's software used within a number of real world scenarios, and show the investigative thought processes of an educational psychologist as they work through the assessment reports.