The 10 were named as the winners of this year’s Let Teachers SHINE competition. Run by education charity SHINE, the initiative supports teachers to make their ideas a reality.
Winners receive grants of up to £25,000 to pilot projects designed to help disadvantaged children in the North to flourish at school.
As well as funding, SHINE offers winning teachers free access to a broad range of development workshops and coaching opportunities – helping teachers to get the best out of their ideas.
This year’s winning programmes will support children of all ages, from the early years to post-16 education. This year’s winners related to secondary education include:
Julia Smith: 5Rsonline: Maths teacher Julia’s project will give up to 150 teachers from at least 15 colleges in the North East and Yorkshire free online access to a bespoke GCSE maths revision curriculum. Around 3,000 students will log on to receive a daily dose of maths, curated by Julia and grounded in research.
Luke Helstrip: Impact of STEM 7: Luke Helstrip, a chemistry teacher at Leeds Sixth Form College, has devised a project that helps to develop students’ skills, such as creative thinking, communication, problem-solving and collaboration, allowing them to make faster progress in their lessons. These skills will help the students as they apply for jobs, or university places. They could also help to improve exam results.
Sam Slingsby: Numeracy Bridger: Sam Slingsby, from the pupil referral unit Educational Diversity in Blackpool, is working on a project aimed at improving the numeracy skills of the town’s most vulnerable children who are currently below the average for their age. Numeracy Bridger practitioners will work with children on a one-on-one basis, developing their basic maths skills.
Lucy Huelin: Vocabulous: Lucy Huelin, a classics teacher at Bootham School, is creating an innovative and engaging website aimed at building the language skills of disadvantaged children in year 7 at secondary school. Using videos, quizzes and games, students will learn Latin root words and their derivatives, hone skills to work out new words and compete to climb the leaderboard.
Doug King: Flipped Tuition: Doug King, assistant principal at Oldham Sixth Form College, is developing a new way of engaging parents in their children’s education. Doug’s project, Flipped Tuition, will use text messages and web-based resources to build the knowledge and confidence of parents to have positive discussions at home about studying. They will be offered support and advice that they can pass on to their children, helping to develop independent study skills and habits that can be used in all subject areas to help support students through their education.
Helen Rafferty, interim chief executive of SHINE, said: “This year’s awards were held during some of the most challenging times teachers have ever faced, making the quality of the applications all the more impressive.
“Each of the teachers who took part in the competition demonstrated their innovation and commitment to really make a difference to the futures of children from low-income families. We look forward to working with the winners to help them develop their ideas and help hundreds of children to succeed at school.”
- For more details on the Let Teachers SHINE project and the work of SHINE more generally, visit https://shinetrust.org.uk/