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Teaching
Matthew has been teaching for more years than he wants to recall, working in Primary, Junior and Middle schools in the State and Public sectors.
His practice has focused within KS2, teaching in Years 4, 5 and 6 for the last decade. As the subject lead for Religious Education within his school, Matthew has developed a multidisciplinary Religion & Worldviews based pedagogy. This curriculum has been awarded an REQM Gold Award and graded as Excellent by SIAMS. The content of this curriculum and the supporting change management process have been explored in many articles and presentations and his book Wayfinder.
Religious Education
Matthew has contributed to national RE projects including Big Ideas for RE; CPD for The Bible Society; and advising on and developing exemplar lessons and curriculum as part of a team for the RE Council’s Religion & Worldviews project. He was an editor and writer for the ReformingRE project that is lead a conversation between teachers, educators and academics as Religious Education transforms into Religions & Worldviews. This online project can be seen at the ReformingRE website.
Matthew is a regular RE advisor on the Myatt & Co Primary Subject Network meetings series. He is also producing the 40 episodes RE Knowledge Bites video series for Myatt & Co. A member of Norfolk SACRE, he is advising on the revisions to the nationally regarded Norfolk Locally Agreed Syllabus for RE which will inform the curriculum and learning of all schools in Norfolk.
To date, his writing on pedagogy have been published in teachPrimary, Times Educational Supplement (online and in print), RE:ONLINE, and RE Today to name just a few. Matthew has presented at conferences for NATRE, Norfolk SACRE and has recorded RE subject network videos for Myatt & Co. He has also delivered CPD to schools and clusters. Bespoke CPD can be delivered to your school on request. In 2025, Matthew was pleased to contribute to the writing of the Norfolk Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education.
Matthew’s current area of research is helping to build knowledge rich Religious Education curriculums. This is built around helping students to “build breadth through depth”, using authentic links between different religions and non-religious worldviews to develop understanding. As part of this, he is applying the work and research of Ann Taves and her 6 Big Questions. This model is exemplified in his forthcoming book, Religious Education: A Subject Knowledge Handbook, coming in early 2027 from Bloomsbury.
Leadership
Matthew is a student of leadership, reading and researching widely in business and military fields and how this can be applied to school leadership. Examples of this cross discipline research can be seen in his book on change leadership, Wayfinder: leading curriculum vision into reality, which was published in 2023. Before teaching, Matthew was an office in the Royal Navy and enjoyed some of the best leadership training in the world.
He is a Member of the Chartered Management Institute and became a Chartered Manager in 2024.
Matthew is married to a very patient fellow teacher, surrounded by too many books and even more Warhammer models. He is usually seen with a well waxed handlebar mustache and hunting for another cup of coffee. He wrote this About section in the third person because the first person voice makes a chap sound far too full of himself.
“Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing”