Jean Gross

Jean Gross is a best-selling author who writes about children’s issues. She is passionate about achieving better life chances for children who don’t have much going for them in their lives – particularly disadvantaged children and those with special educational needs. She writes practical books that aim to help teachers and says ‘What I do when I write is collect the fantastic practice I have seen on my travels and try to put a conceptual framework around it, linking practice to research evidence.’ Jean has been a teacher, an educational psychologist, head of children’s services in a local authority, and a Visiting Fellow at two universities. She was until recently the UK government’s Communication Champion for children, responsible for promoting the importance of good language skills. Before this she headed a charity responsible for one-to-one literacy and numeracy tuition programmes, and led work on overcoming barriers to achievement as a Director of the government’s National Strategies. She was awarded a CBE for services to education in 2011.