Val Payne

Represented by Claudia Young
Val Payne
Val Payne has over 30 years’ experience as a teacher working in various roles in education and social care, including mainstream, outreach, alternative education and special school provision.

Val initially taught in a mainstream secondary school and became a Head of Year responsible for Year 7 and the transfer from primary to secondary school. Val subsequently spent 20 years working in a range of provisions with the focus of meeting the needs of children and young people with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. This included acting as an area manager of a primary and secondary support service for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, a Headteacher of a secondary special school, Centre Coordinator of a Pupil Referral Unit and Coordinator of provision for children out-of-school. In all of these roles the challenge was to develop strategies to motivate the pupils to want to learn and to manage their behaviour positively.

In the latter years of her career Val worked as an Education Liaison Officer for a national fostering agency promoting the educational achievement of looked after children. In addition Val became the Service Lead for Education for an organisation delivering children’s services with the role of developing and overseeing a range of educational provision across the United Kingdom.

In all of these roles Val focussed on promoting the wellbeing of children and young people as a way of improving their educational outcomes and life chances.

Val is currently an active volunteer for Action for happiness – a movement of people committed to building a happier and more caring society. For the last 5 years Val has worked with Peter Harper (clinical psychologist) to develop a Toolkit for Primary Schools to support teachers to teach children the skills to manage their emotional resilience and wellbeing. They have also recently co-authored a children’s book with Vanessa King entitled 50 WAYS TO FEEL HAPPY.

Books by Val Payne