NOW THAT’S A SCHOOL REUNION!
Secret of classroom success? 10 members of staff are ex-pupils...
THEY say your school days are the best of your life. And for these ten staff members, their time at St Edmund’s Catholic School was so happy that they have returned to spend their working lives there as well.
The secondary school in Portsmouth has hired six former pupils as teachers and another four in support roles.
They are pictured here holding photos of themselves as schoolchildren.
It means that one in ten members of staff were originally taught at the 1,000pupil school for 11 to 16 year olds. And St Edmund’s is crediting this link between past and present for its recent success.
The school has risen from an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted rating in 2011 to ‘outstanding’ in 2016. The former pupils who now take lessons say they ‘will always have more of an affinity’ with their school than other teachers.
St Edmund’s is now encouraging more pupils to come back to work there by displaying posters of the ten staff, aged between 23 and 62. Adam Poxton attended from 1999 to 2004, but is now head of PE and has taught at the school since 2009.
He said: ‘At first it was a strange experience coming back and doing a lunchtime duty with a member of staff who was my geography teacher. I called him “Sir”, and he had to turn around and say, “look, call me Rob”.’
Assistant head Moira Howarth taught five of the pupils-turned-teachers when they were children. She said: ‘We are really proud to welcome these students back as teachers. St Edmund’s is very much a family school. It’s brilliant to see them develop from the children we saw at school into the fantastic teachers they have become.’