As anyone who has experienced the impact of an inspirational teacher will know, anything is possible with the right guidance, care and motivation...’
THEY call him “the maths whisperer”. All hail the power of the lifechanging teacher – as embodied so wonderfully this week by Francis Elive, who guided his entire class of 30 pupils at Cardiff’s Fitzalan High School to A*s in their maths GCSE.
Six months early too, with some youngsters scoring almost full marks.
It was a story of extraordinary achievement that captured headlines across the UK.
The accompanying picture of smiling teenagers reflecting the diversity of the Welsh capital added to the feel-good factor.
Fitzalan draws on a catchment area where 70% of pupils come from a minority ethnic background and speak English as an additional language.
It is also a school which has almost double the national average of pupils eligible for free school meals, so these are young people facing significant challenges.
Yet, as anyone who has experienced the impact of an inspirational teacher will know, anything is possible with the right guidance, care and motivation.
Assistant head teacher Jo Kemp’s description of the big exam results reveal underlined the fact that Mr Elive has these special qualities.
She explained the 55-year-old teacher has instilled confidence in his pupils right from the very beginning of their secondary school journey.
“We did a countdown so they all opened their results at the same time. There was a gasp as they saw their results and then all realised they had the same. He’s passionate about his subject and he is quite a reserved man, but he was just on pins like an expectant dad – how you would want a teacher of your children to be feeling,” she said.
“We call him the maths whisperer, he instils the belief that they have practised the hardest maths that they ever have to face so why be scared of an exam?
“It’s the belief that they absolutely can do it, and the children think it’s magic.”
Wizardry indeed.
For let’s not forget what subject this is.
Humanities teachers have an easier ride on the inspirational front because their source material is surely, well, more obviously inspiring?
Think of Robin “oh captain my captain” Williams leaping on the desk to enrapture his charges with the wonder of Walt Whitman in Dead Poets Society.
Or Miss Jean Brodie’s “gels” in thrall to her romantic interpretations of Renaissance art.
But sums?
A teacher who can communicate the magic of maths is an educational hero because it is a subject with baggage.
Psychology can be key. So many of us have been held back by our attitude to maths rather than our lack of ability.
And it sounds as if Mr Elive has cracked the confidence conundrum brilliantly.
I write as someone who was terrified of numbers.
Even now if you asked me to recite my eight times table, I’d be out the door wailing before you could say arithmophobia.
Yes, my greatest fear is maths. This also means my greatest achievement in life is my C grade in Mathematics O-level. And that was with extra tutoring.
Plus, we were one of the first generations of pupils allowed to take calculators into the examination hall along with protractors, slide rules and a lucky Gonk.
I’d never have managed it without that life-saving Casio.
You remember the one. Khaki screen. Grey, brown and orange buttons. And there was always some chortling boy typing 80085 into it to make it read BOOBS.
So where did my numerical neurosis begin? Probably in junior school.
Mental arithmetic tests equalled extreme psychological anguish for my seven-year-old self.
Standing up in the classroom for on-the-spot sums – what greater horror is there?
This was also the era of endless
times tables recitation. I managed the tune, but never quite got to grips with the words.
Being so useless at maths was a particular source of pain for me as I was an earnest little swot whose sole purpose in childhood was to accumulate more stars alongside my name than the Milky Way.
But while I whizzed through reading tests, recited the kings and queens roll-call through eight centuries and trained hard enough in PE to become 1978 Mid-Rhondda Skipping Champion, long division dragged me back to the dunces’ corner.
Secondary school brought new anxieties. After all, no career path in life could be completed without ticking maths O-Level off the academic essentials list.
I took English Language O-level a year early but feared I’d be taking Maths O-level every year for the rest of my life.
Pythagoras’ Theorem? It was all Greek to me. Trapezium? What you see when Billy Smart and co come to town. Pi? Clarks or Peter’s, please.
I wouldn’t have minded if it seemed relevant to life beyond the school gates, like bank accounts, business spreadsheets or interest rates on credit cards.
But it was all so theoretical. Quadratic equations; algebra; straight-line graphs; trigonometry; Venn diagrams...
Yet even though my favourite subjects – English and music – could also present “puzzles”, cracking the mystery of metaphors in the unseen poetry criticism or counting the syncopated beats of a contemporary flute concerto, maths never seemed a challenge that involved pleasure. It was simply a source of fear. I’ve often wondered whether my problem with the subject is nature or nurture.
Are my confidence issues the result of social conditioning, believing, erroneously, that maths is somehow a “male subject? Or am I just thick when it comes to numbers?
And isn’t it strange that we can cheerfully declare our mathematical incompetence with a perverse pride whereas who would ever boast about being illiterate?
To Mr Elive’s A* pupils, however, maths appears to be a source of joy.
Judging by the boy-girl balance of the class photograph, gender stereotyping is no longer an issue either.
As the Cardiff teacher was lauded across the UK media, The Times’ editorial addressed the “unsolved equation.” How does he do it?
“He denies any secret method, choosing instead to commend his pupils’ hard work. That remark offers the best clue to his success, suggesting as it does an ability to motivate youngsters in what can be a tricky subject. Even the brightest pupils can lose their way as its complexities unfold. Mr Elive’s gift is to instil enough enthusiasm and self-belief to keep young minds focused not only on achieving understanding, but excellence. He shows that what makes a great teacher is a love for their subject and a desire to pass it on. Fitzalan has almost double the national average of pupils eligible for free school meals. Thus Mr Elive has performed the added service of demonstrating that brainpower is not determined by social class.”
His example has also reminded us of the value of his profession, a job that routinely takes a battering from those with no experience of life at the chalk-face... or, more accurately these days, the digital whiteboard.
I’ve always known teachers can be amazing because I’ve seen it from both sides, at home, as well as in the classroom.
My father was an English teacher, then a headmaster; my mother taught human biology and pre-nursing courses at Rhondda College.
It was a novelty having both parents home for the “long holidays” but those who scoffed at the short days and lengthy vacations of those in education had no idea of the reality.
The school day never ended with the bell.
They didn’t “break up” at the end of term.
There was preparation; marking; administration; accounts; pastoral issues; extra-curricular activities – a workload that has increased in recent years.
Stories abound of teachers’ morale levels at an all-time low. It is not helped by people in other lines of work – who will never know the challenge of the classroom – sneering that teaching is a cushy number.
There were times when I wondered why my parents did it.
Then we’d bump into a past pupil or student and the benefits of working on the production line of human potential would become clear.
I remember the mature student who came to our house to thank my mother for changing his life.
After failing at school, he came to her further education college to start again. She sparked his interest in human biology and set him on a path that eventually saw him become a university academic.
I remember the tearful middleaged man who thanked my father for believing in him when no-one else did as he floundered in his first years at secondary school.
“I’d never be where I am today if you hadn’t helped me,” he said.
Seeing how choked my dad was at these kind words, I wrote a letter that night to the teacher who had changed my life.
It was never my idea to apply to Oxford, but my force-of-nature English teacher Stella Pellard was never going to let the insecurities of her valley girls hold them back.
Charismatic, inspiring and irreverent, she shaped the love of language and literature that has shaped everything I have done ever since. And I can never thank her enough for that.
I’m sure Mr Elive’s pupils feel a similar gratitude to the teacher who has instilled in them the belief that they can reach for the A*s.
In doing so he has given these young people a life lesson that adds up to much more than a maths GCSE.