Melissa is a writer and campaigner and has written and edited several books on education, including Life Lessons: The Case for a National Education Service (2018). In 2012 Melissa won the Fred and Anne Jarvis award in recognition of her outstanding contribution to creating a fairer education system. She was a founder member of the Local Schools Network, and chair of the cross-party campaign group Comprehensive Future until late 2018.

Harriet is an analyst at the Tony Blair Institute. Before that she was a policy advisor in the Department for Transport, where she worked in a strategy division setting the strategic direction of the Rail Transformation Programme. Prior to this, she worked on fiscal policy at the Department for Levelling Up, and was an intern for the Higher Education Policy Institute.

Francis Green is professor of work and education economics at UCL Institute of Education, where among other areas he has done extensive research on private schools. He is the co-author with David Kynaston of their book, Engines of Privilege: Britain's Private School Problem. Prior to his role at the IoE, he held professorial posts at the universities of Leeds and Kent. Francis was educated at Lancing College in West Sussex.

Madeleine Holt runs the pioneering Meet the Parents project to encourage all families to support their local non-selective schools. A former culture correspondent on BBC Newsnight, she makes films about schools and has made the first in-depth documentary about XP comprehensive in Doncaster through her enterprise, Schools on Screen. She helped set up the campaign group Rescue Our Schools and won the Fred and Anne Jarvis Award for education campaigning in 2019.

Jess is a journalist. Her work on SEND provision, small failing private schools and off-rolling has generated national coverage. Jess has reported for The Guardian, Al Jazeera and The Big Issue and in 2019 fronted a BBC investigation into an academy trust collapse. She is formerly a reporter at newspapers Schools Week and FE Week and was longlisted for the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism in 2022. She now works for investigative journalism unit SourceMaterial on climate and corruption.

After working for more than a decade with vulnerable and excluded members of society, Mike became the government's deputy drug tsar from 1997-2001. He was then president of the European Union drugs agency, and later worked for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. He is now chief executive of the Forward Trust, a charity that helps people break the cycle of crime and addiction.

Ellen Walkinshaw is a director at a large sixth form college and has previously taught in 11-18 schools in London and sixth form colleges in Surrey. Roles have included managing a range of curriculum areas, working to drive improvement across schools in Wandsworth as an Advanced Skills Teacher and most recently leading on progression and skills. She has recently completed a masters in policy studies in education at UCL. Ellen is also vice chair of governors at a local secondary school.