So brave. So inspiring. Teachers like Ann Maguire transform lives — and I’m proof
After the classroom stabbing that appalled Britain, Education Secretary MICHAEL GOVE pays an emotional tribute to the teachers who took him from life in care to Oxford
Ann MAGUIRE was exceptional. But she was also typical. The Leeds teacher who was stabbed to death in her classroom in such horrific circumstances this week was transparently a wonderful person. Every student who had known her emphasised the same things.
Her kindness, patience, thoughtfulness, love of teaching and of her students. Her whole adult life was dedicated to helping the children she taught grow into happy and rounded grown-ups. The example she set of gentle Christian goodness lives on after her in thousands of hearts.
The tragic details of her death only serve poignantly to underline how special she was. Ann was only in school because she had chosen to come in on a day off to help her students prepare for exam season.
She was due to retire in a few months’ time after 40 years of dedicated service to the school and pupils she loved. Exceptional as her example was, it also served to remind us all that the virtues Ann incarnated are the virtues exhibited every day in classrooms across the country by thousands of teachers.
If anything typifies the teaching profession it is the habit of living for others. Every day, teachers put children ahead of themselves, rising well before school starts and finishing work long after the last bell, making sure that everything that can be done is done to help students succeed.
In Ann’s own school, Corpus Christi Catholic College, I know that there are many dedicated professionals, not least the gifted headteacher Steve Mort, who work enormously hard to provide their students with every possible oppor- tunity in life. And what they do, so many others do every day.
The nation’s thoughts and prayers have been in Leeds this week, with Ann’s family, the school she loved and the community she served so well. But as we all share in their sadness and loss we have also, as a nation, been reflecting on, and giving thanks for, the work all teachers do.
In conversation over the dinner table, on social media, in broadcast studios and in newspaper columns, Britain has been saying thank you to our teachers.
And speaking personally, I don’t think we can say thank you often
enough. The best part of my job is being able to visit schools, meet teachers, see the inspirational work they do and express my gratitude for their energy and idealism.
Whether it was the Spanish lesson I saw last month in Corby in which 11 and 12-year- olds were being taught the translation skills we used to expect of A-level students, or the English lesson I watched in a London primary school where children from the homes of Somali and Kosovar refugees were discussing the meaning of tyranny in Macbeth and Julius Caesar, there are miracles of learning occurring every day in our state schools.
I know that the pace of change in education over the past few years has been fast. And the reaction from some has been furious. But away from the arena of politicians and trade union leaders, the everyday reality of education is of teachers’ hard work yielding better and better results.
Every objective measure tells us we have the best generation of teachers ever in our state schools. They are better qualified, harder working and more effective than ever. As a result, the number of schools which fall below acceptable standards is lower than ever and the number of children in those schools has dropped by hundreds of thousands in the last few years.
The gratitude I feel towards teachers is more than just a professional thing. For me, it’s personal.
This week many people have, rightly, been remembering the exceptional teachers who changed their lives for the better. And I’ve been one of them. But more than that, every day and every week I have cause to reflect on the impact a string of exceptional teachers have had on my life — transforming it beyond measure.
I spent the first few months of my life in care, having been given up for adoption at birth. But I was lucky to be adopted by a wonderful and loving family in Aberdeen. And I was particularly lucky that my mum and dad, maybe because they’d both left school at 15, were intent on giving me the best education they could.
At Sunnybank and Kittybrewster Primaries in the Seventies, I was inspired by Mr Sharp and Mr Gillanders, two no-nonsense head- teachers in the traditional Scots mould. Both ran schools which were truly comprehensive.
Boys and girls from council flats in the most deprived wards in the city and children brought up in the spacious granite villas designed for solid professionals mixed in every class.
But while the intake was inclusive, the ethos was ambitious.
And no one was more ambitious for us than Eileen Christie, my teacher in my final year in primary.
HEr husband was an executive with the local TV station, Grampian. And the year I started in Mrs Christie’s class was the year they broadcast The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie with Geraldine McEwan playing the inspirational teacher of the title.
We were hardly the crème de la crème in Kittybrewster but Mrs Christie, like Miss Brodie, encouraged us to dream. And in particular, she pushed me to apply to the local boys’ independent school, robert Gordon’s College. Going to Gordon’s was a financial stretch for my parents. But they made the sacrifices to pay my fees.
We never went abroad on holiday during my time at secondary school, and my dad had to stick with the same clapped-out Datsun for eight years. But in making that sacrifice, they set me on a path of amazing opportunity.
Their generosity is one debt I can never repay.
At Gordon’s, my form teacher was a man called Mike Duncan, who was also Head of English. And, my family apart, no other individual has had such a profound influence on my life. I was a keen reader before going up to secondary school, but Mr Duncan helped me to fall in love with literature. He introduced me to an amazing array of writers.
Through him, I read the authors I adore to this day; Jane Austen, George Eliot, Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh, Alexander Pope, Louis MacNeice, George Orwell and Lewis Grassic Gibbon, the Scots writer whose novel Sunset Song is one of the most moving, and underrated, works of the 20th century. A book about thwarted potential and love in all its complexities, about the importance of education, the injustices society visits on women, the brutalising horrors of war and the peace nature can bring, it haunts me still.
In one sense Mike Duncan was, like the teacher Hector in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, a lover of learning for learning’s sake, intent on ‘passing the parcel’ of knowledge to the next generation. That in itself is a very special calling. But he was also more, much more than just an evangelist for the best that had been thought and written.
He was, like so many other teachers, someone whose greatest joy came from the successes of others. The sense of moral purpose that guided him was granting to each child he taught the joy that comes from accomplishing more than any of us thought we could ever achieve.
Again, like Hector, he helped stage drama productions which gave those of us who were less bookish or literary a chance to find our voices through performance. He worked hard to provide advice and guidance on courses and careers so we could plot a path through our teenage years to the life we aspired to live.
He also ran the school debating club, coaching us in how to argue using logic and reason, chaperoning us to debating competitions across Scotland and working out which chip shops might be open on the long drive back from Edinburgh so we could enjoy a late fish supper in the back of the bus after arguing the boys from Stewarts Melville College in Edinburgh into the ground.
And like so many teachers, his time for us didn’t stop when the lessons did. It wasn’t just drama and debating. He’d make time to help us with preparation for university entry, or the world of work, giving up evenings at home to coach us in essay technique or just talk about life and books, ideas and ideals.
Gordon’s had many brilliant teachers. Bob Graham, my endlessly patient chemistry teacher; Martin McColgan and Doug Stewart, a Morecambe and Wise partnership who taught me History; Cath richmond, a lovely big sister who helped me overcome my initial nerves in secondary school; Howard Smith, the genial quintessence of common- sense who headed the geography department and coached hockey; Mike Wilson the mordantly witty head of Classics and Iain Templeton, a stylish maths teacher who was the absolute spitting image of the Labour politician Tony Crosland in his prime and who went on to become head of Glenalmond College.
BuT it was Mike Duncan who stood out for me, and I know for many others. While I was at school, indeed while Mike was my form teacher, my dad’s small business collapsed. He ran a fish processing firm, founded by my grandfather, which employed about 20 people, many of them lads who had been in trouble at some point in their lives, who my dad wanted to give a second chance.
My dad rose before dawn to go to Aberdeen fish market to buy the stock he would subsequently help gut and fillet himself alongside his workers. But the Eu’s fisheries policy led to the slow strangulation of many businesses like my dad’s and he had to sell up just as I was facing my principal exams.
It was Mike who ensured I was able to win a scholarship, which enabled me to stay at Gordon’s, complete my exams and then, unbelievably for my family, become not just the first to go to university, but to go to Oxford.
To start your whole life in care and, 18 years later, to begin your adult life in the world’s greatest university is quite a journey. I was only able to make it thanks to a succession of inspirational teachers.
And today, hundreds of thousands of children, many from backgrounds much more challenging than my own, are making it in their own way. Thanks to the sacrifices made on their behalf by the nation’s teachers. No profession is so important, no vocation more noble, no one deserves our gratitude more.