The teacher’s teacher

So what do your children’s teachers do on their training days? It could be that they’re being trained by one of VT’s education consultants.

As a father of two and an ex-deputy head teacher, Jonathan Roddick (who has been with VT for 18 months) knows the importance of a solid education.

“The first few years of literacy development are the key to hitting the ground running throughout education,” he says. “Just look at prison statistics, a high percentage of the prison population have literacy difficulties.”

His job title, Lead Consultant for Primary English, doesn’t say enough. What Jonathan and his team of 10 consultants (as part of a 40 strong primary consultant team) are doing enables head teachers, teachers, parents and governors to help their children achieve education goals. “Basically it’s about school improvement, and ultimately this gives children a springboard to choose a successful life,” says Jonathan.

Working within Local Authorities that stretch from Surrey through London and Reading to Brighton, Jonathan’s teams’ remit is to provide advice and guidance to schools, particularly focusing on the quality of learning and teaching. This might mean strategic level planning with a school’s leadership team, observing a teacher in action for one-to-one feedback, action planning with a head of subject hosting a conference on helping children to read more confidently and transposing that to their writing).

While there are multiple projects on the go at any one time, many national initiatives (and centrally funded) such as Every Child a Reader and Wave 3 Special Needs Project, VT is also driving its own.

One such example is the Boys’ Writing Project.  Research indicates that young boys benefit from having a visual element in their learning. The project is focusing on using aids (such as pictures or video clips) to jump start creativity. This is backed by utilising drama techniques such as role play to develop characterisation in situations. These techniques have been proven to stimulate boys’ imaginations making the actual process of writing the story far more exciting for them.

The VT team take localised views and interpret national initiatives into the context of the school within which they are consulting, from small leafy village primaries to those in more challenging environments. The point is by further upskilling the teachers, innovative thinking can be harmonised with resources to develop children’s literacy.

One of Jonathan’s current projects falls into the Every Child a Reader centrally funded by DCSF). Children who are really struggling in year one are put into an intensive support programme where a teacher works one to one for several weeks to build reading skills.

“This is one in a very small list of things that actually helps for children who are struggling to read,” says Jonathan. “The majority of children learn to read quite well, but those that don’t at this early stage have their life choices immediately impacted for evermore.”

So next time you groan about finding childcare for another teacher training day, just remember, it might be the day that makes all the difference to your child’s future.