Jean Gross CBE

Former Government Communication Champion for Children

Jean is a popular speaker and national expert on educational disadvantage and special educational needs. Her best-selling books include Beating Bureaucracy in SEND (4th edition, 2023), Time to Talk (2017) and Reaching the Unseen Children: practical strategies to close stubborn attainment gaps in disadvantaged groups (2021).

She has been a teacher, an educational psychologist and head of children’s services in a local authority. She was formerly government Communication Champion for children; before this she headed the Every Child a Reader and Every Child Counts one-to-one tuition programmes, and led on inclusion within the government’s National Strategies. She was awarded a CBE for services to education in 2011.