Cheryl Lacey is an educationist, speaker and author. She has published several books, writes a weekly newsletter and has another book on the way.
She traced her philosophy in teaching back to her early days, when a class clown and bully was caught smoking at school: instead of punishment his teacher instilled him with belonging, opportunity and responsibility. Since then she has wanted to be involved, especially in the education of children with special needs. She believes in integration, the right to be enrolled in school. Cheryl herself only understood the application of involvement after she became a teacher. 
Cheryl gave her opinion on NAPLAN: approving of the concept of assessment, but not of its delivery.
She delivered some hard facts:
1) there are 3,000 suicides a year of young people (under 25)
2) One third of the families have a single parent
3) 81% of school teachers are female.
She also questioned the real unemployment figures, as the numbers of those in crafts and trades may not be accurate.
Before fielding several robust questions from the floor, Cheryl closed her talk with two questions for us to ponder upon:
“What is education?”
And: “What is our responsibility to contribute to it?”
Cheryl's professional diversity includes teaching & consulting spanning the early childhood to tertiary sector, business owner, and radio and print media. She's a lively, well respected and thought-provoking contrarian.