Latest news with #TomBennett
Finextra
15-05-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Apex Group appoints new global head of fintech
Apex Group Ltd. ('the Group'), the leading global financial services provider, has appointed Tom Bennett as Global Head of Fintech. 0 In this newly created role, Tom will lead Apex Group's global fintech strategy, enhancing its digital capabilities across private markets, capital markets, and digital assets. Under his leadership, Apex Group will look to further enhance its digital proposition with new initiatives across the entire client lifecycle, including digital onboarding and workflow, AI powered risk and accounting solutions, capital raising solutions, and a new sustainability platform. With a focus on execution and regulatory rigor, Apex Group aims to bridge the gap between traditional asset management and the rapidly evolving digital economy. Tom Bennett's background boasts experience at leading companies such as JLL and BT, and he most recently served as Group Head of Innovation at Aztec Group, prior to joining Apex Group. He has 15 plus years of experience working with tech companies and communities, with a proven track record of building and scaling innovative new ventures and digital products. Commenting on his appointment, Tom Bennett, Global Head of Fintech at Apex Group, said: 'I'm thrilled to join Apex Group at a pivotal time for fintech innovation. Our goal is to build a future-ready platform for TradFi and DeFi with digital infrastructure, from tokenization to AI-driven tools. We're focused on delivering scalable, client-centric solutions that drive real-world impact, while extending our partnerships and accelerating Apex's digital growth. Our recent acquisition of Flow is a perfect example of this.' Zion Hilelly, Chief Product Officer, at Apex Group said: 'We are delighted to welcome Tom to the Apex team. He brings with him a wealth of experience and a fresh perspective that will prove invaluable in driving our strategic direction as both user and provider of tech solutions. This appointment marks the creation of a new role within Apex, highlighting our continued commitment to growth and success within the fintech sector. We look forward to the contributions Tom will spearhead as we continue from strength to strength.'
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Yahoo
Schools in Scotland witness ‘exponential increase' in pupil violence
Scottish schools are facing 'an exponential increase' in pupil violence, with classroom behaviour deteriorating 'massively' and absences outstripping England and Wales, according to teaching unions, behaviour experts and opposition politicians. Headline figures from a forthcoming survey for the NASUWT union reveal 44% of Scottish respondents have experienced physical abuse or violence in the last 12 months while 90% had been verbally abused. Related: Scotland exam results: pass rate falls as attainment gap widens across board NASUWT members at Kirkintilloch high school, East Dunbartonshire, began industrial action earlier this week in protest at 'a culture of abuse and violence from pupils', including 'constant' misogynist abuse of female teachers, but the union said such behaviour was by no means exclusive to this school. 'We do know that the behaviour of Scottish schools has deteriorated massively and in my experience compared with England it is much worse,' says Tom Bennett, an independent behavioural adviser to the UK Department for Education. Bennett adds that, while England 'isn't perfect by any means', it has 'started to take the behavioural climate of schools seriously'. Persistent absence rates – which Bennett says are 'undoubtedly' affected by the crisis in classroom behaviour – are much higher in Scotland. Overall, 31.4% of all primary and secondary pupils were absent for more than 10% of school sessions in 2023-24, compared with 19.2% across England. Since taking over the shadow education brief in October, the Conservative MSP Miles Briggs has made a series of interventions at Holyrood focusing on classroom behaviour, revealing through freedom of information research that a physical or verbal assault took place every two minutes of the school day in 2024, while instances of weapons being used in schools have increased by 50% since pre-pandemic levels. Andrea Bradley, the general secretary of the EIS, Scotland's largest teaching union, says she has seen an 'exponential increase' in pupil violence since the pandemic and that while Covid exacerbated pre-existing issues, it was not the catalyst: 'Since the onset of austerity, we've seen rising incidents of violent, aggressive, dysregulated, distressed behaviour in classrooms and growing incidents of additional support needs,' she says. By the end of 2024, the number of pupils with additional support needs (ASN) reached more than 40% for the first time. Scotland employs a more inclusive approach to ASN with a presumption that all children should be taught in mainstream schools. Bradley suggests that some challenging behaviour comes about because 'a large number of young people are not having their additional support needs met because of insufficient resources', and also highlights poor provision for neurodiversity and mental ill-health affecting in-school attitudes as well as absences. Last August, the Scottish government's education secretary, Jenny Gilruth, published a long-awaited action plan on pupil behaviour, with a progress report anticipated this spring. The Scottish government now says that local authorities should be putting policies in place 'which determine clearly what action should be taken to address challenging behaviour', as well as publishing new guidance on gender-based violence, mobile phones and anti-bullying itself, and funding training for support staff. 'What's happening in East Dunbartonshire is a sign that teachers have had enough,' says Briggs. 'The Scottish government blaming councils isn't good enough. Teachers want a national policy on this – we need government to say what behaviour is unacceptable, what is the pathway to correcting it.' This chimes with increasing doubts among unions and experts about the popularity in Scottish education policy of restorative approaches to behaviour management, which focus on structured conversations between staff and pupils to address incidents of poor behaviour. 'The wholesale adoption of the restorative approach to pupil discipline has definitely been a problem,' says Mike Corbett of NASUWT Scotland. 'You can't offer a quiet chat and no serious consequences for this level of disruptive behaviour.' 'There has to be a much stronger focus now on consequences,' says Bradley. 'We are pushing for a nationally agreed set of parameters of what is unacceptable behaviour and a range of consequences up to and including exclusion,' she says, while emphasising that exclusion, which is used significantly less in Scotland, must be a sanction of absolute last resort. She points to the SNP's unfulfilled 2021 manifesto pledge to recruit 3,500 additional teachers for three years in a row as a part of the problem, while EIS members in Glasgow earlier this week voted to strike over city council cuts to teaching posts. 'We are quite clear that we're not going to be able to change the distressing dynamics unfolding in schools and make them safer places for students and teachers without sufficient numbers of responsible, suitably trained adults to support that process.'
The Guardian
06-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Schools in Scotland witness ‘exponential increase' in pupil violence
Scottish schools are facing 'an exponential increase' in pupil violence, with classroom behaviour deteriorating 'massively' and absences outstripping England and Wales according to teaching unions, behaviour experts and opposition politicians. Headline figures from a forthcoming survey for the NASUWT union reveal 44% of Scottish respondents have experienced physical abuse or violence in the last 12 months while 90% had been verbally abused. NASUWT members at Kirkintilloch high school, East Dunbartonshire, began industrial action earlier this week in protest at 'a culture of abuse and violence from pupils', including 'constant' misogynist abuse of female teachers, but the union said such behaviour was by no means exclusive to this school. 'We do know that the behaviour of Scottish schools has deteriorated massively and in my experience compared with England it is much worse,' says Tom Bennett, an independent behavioural adviser to the UK Department for Education. Bennett adds that, while England 'isn't perfect by any means', it has 'started to take the behavioural climate of schools seriously'. Persistent absence rates – which Bennett says are 'undoubtedly' affected by the crisis in classroom behaviour – are much higher in Scotland. Overall, 31.4% of all primary and secondary pupils were absent for more than 10% of school sessions in 2023-24, compared with 19.2% across England and Wales. Since taking over the shadow education brief in October, the Conservative MSP Miles Briggs has made a series of interventions at Holyrood focusing on classroom behaviour, revealing through freedom of information research that a physical or verbal assault took place every two minutes of the school day in 2024, while instances of weapons being used in schools have increased by 50% since pre-pandemic levels. Andrea Bradley, the general secretary of the EIS, Scotland's largest teaching union, says she has seen an 'exponential increase' in pupil violence since the pandemic and that while Covid exacerbated pre-existing issues, it was not the catalyst: 'Since the onset of austerity, we've seen rising incidents of violent, aggressive, disregulated, distressed behaviour in classrooms and growing incidents of additional support needs,' she says. By the end of 2024, the number of pupils with additional support needs (ASN) reached more than 40% for the first time. Scotland employs a more inclusive approach to ASN with a presumption that all children should be taught in mainstream schools. Bradley suggests that some challenging behaviour comes about because 'a large number of young people are not having their additional support needs met because of insufficient resources', and also highlights poor provision for neurodiversity and mental ill-health affecting in-school attitudes as well as absences. Last August, the Scottish government's education secretary, Jenny Gilruth, published a long-awaited action plan on pupil behaviour, with a progress report anticipated this spring. The Scottish government now says that local authorities should be putting policies in place 'which determine clearly what action should be taken to address challenging behaviour', as well as publishing new guidance on gender-based violence, mobile phones and anti-bullying itself, and funding training for support staff. 'What's happening in East Dunbartonshire is a sign that teachers have had enough,' says Briggs. 'The Scottish government blaming councils isn't good enough. Teachers want a national policy on this – we need government to say what behaviour is unacceptable, what is the pathway to correcting it.' This chimes with increasing doubts among unions and experts about the popularity in Scottish education policy of restorative approaches to behaviour management, which focus on structured conversations between staff and pupils to address incidents of poor behaviour. 'The wholesale adoption of the restorative approach to pupil discipline has definitely been a problem,' says Mike Corbett of NASUWT Scotland. 'You can't offer a quiet chat and no serious consequences for this level of disruptive behaviour.' 'There has to be a much stronger focus now on consequences,' says Bradley. 'We are pushing for a nationally agreed set of parameters of what is unacceptable behaviour and a range of consequences up to and including exclusion,' she says, while emphasising that exclusion, which is used significantly less in Scotland, must be a sanction of absolute last resort. She points to the SNP's unfulfilled 2021 manifesto pledge to recruit 3,500 additional teachers for three years in a row as a part of the problem, while EIS members in Glasgow earlier this week voted to strike over city council cuts to teaching posts. 'We are quite clear that we're not going to be able to change the distressing dynamics unfolding in schools and make them safer places for students and teachers without sufficient numbers of responsible, suitably trained adults to support that process.'
