Andrew Jeffrey

Hi, my name is Andrew Jeffrey and I am the Chair of the Parents' Forum.

I am married to Alison and we have two young sons. I worked as a teacher for 20 years and have always enjoyed working with and supporting young people. I very modestly thought that teaching was the most important job in the world until I became a parent, then I realised that teaching was only the second most important thing!

(I also discovered that having a sense of humour is essential for both of the above!)

Our kids attend the local primary school. I recently decided to change jobs so that I could spend more time with them as I found that school was taking up more and more of my time. I had in recent years been doing a fair bit of consultancy in a whole range of schools, and decided to try to combine this with my other career as a professional magician. Earlier this year I formed a company called ‘Magic Message', which uses magic to get key messages across, be they sales, training, self-esteem or mathematical ones, and aims to do so in a memorable way. Because I am my own boss I am free to run my own diary, and this has allowed me to spend more time with my family.

I very quickly came to realise what a tough job it was to be a parent, and I admire anyone who does it successfully. I joined the Core Strategic Group of the Parents' Forum, partly with my ‘education' hat on, but also just as a parent, in order to help support parents who sometimes struggle as I do to ‘get it right'.