Nicole McCartney is a rare species: someone with lived experience of being permanently excluded from school who has gone on to reach senior heights in the education world.
As director of education at Creative Education Trust (CET), she tells her heads to see the challenges some pupils face at home as giving them “superpowers”, and to always have “very high expectations” of them.
“Nobody had high expectations of me,” she says.
Growing up in Michigan, USA, McCartney was every teacher’s worst nightmare. But at home she was a devoted carer to her alcoholic parents.
