Professor Sam Twiselton is director of Sheffield Institute of Education at Sheffield Hallam University and adviser to the Department for Education on the initial teacher training market review. She speaks to Tes about her path into teaching, her mum, why she doesn’t want to be seen as a “government poodle” and a conversation with a teacher that sparked her love of philosophy at the age of 10.

1. Who was your most memorable teacher and why?

A teacher called Mr Hake. I can’t even remember what started it off, but he really encouraged me to be interested in philosophy, which, as a 10-year-old, is a bit weird. I don’t think we studied it in lessons or anything, but I remember on a walk during a school trip we had a really deeply philosophical conversation and Mr Hake said, “We’re having a deeply philosophical conversation here, Sam.” I actually went on to do philosophy at university, and it’s probably why I went on to work as an adviser. There was something about thinking deeply about things from a range of different angles that was sparked off then. Maybe I already had it in me and he just found it. 

2. What were the best and worst things about your time at school?

What I love about learning is there’s something about making connections. For me, that’s often where the real learning happens. I remember doing that in primary and secondary in RE and English literature. You could feel the spark in the moment, either when you made the connection or the teacher made the connection for you.

The worst thing? I was going to say bullying. I wasn’t badly bullied but there was an incident.

There is something I regret not learning at school. I’ve always felt particularly ignorant about modern history. I don’t feel like I understand the world wars well enough, and obviously they still have an impact on us.

Most of the history I studied seemed to go much further back than that but it was all fairly superficial. I dropped it as soon as I could, but now I think it could have been a subject I really got my teeth into.

3. Why do you work in education?

Initially I resisted the idea of being a teacher because my mum was a teacher and it didn’t feel very cool at all to do what your mum does. Looking back, it was probably partly because she was a very good teacher so maybe I just didn’t want to put myself in a position of being compared to her.

I think there were a couple of turning points but the biggest probably was when my sister started having children. I got to know three babies very well for the first time. What fascinated me then was how their brains develop. That was my first fascination with learning and then I got over myself about not doing what my mum did.

I became very aware of what an amazing thing education is, and what a gateway to everything else it is. How it can be a way out of poverty, a way out of social injustice; it’s a foundation for everything else. It’s something I’m now very proud to work in. The sense of potentially transforming lives is what has kept me going ever since.

4. What are you proudest of in your career and what do you regret?

One of the nicest things about getting my OBE three years ago [for services to higher education] was the number of old pupils who got in touch after. It made me realise I’d had an impact. 

I also think that, in the adviser work I have done, I’ve had a positive influence on how seriously teacher development is taken now, both in terms of policy and that everybody is talking about it. I feel like we’re in a much better place than we would have been if I hadn’t been involved in those things.

I think a regret would be that what comes with all of that is a lot of negative reaction. I hate it when people think I’m some kind of government poodle. I don’t think I am. 

There’s been professional jealousy. I’ve had to develop quite a thick skin not to get too upset by it. My advice for anyone experiencing animosity is that if you believe that you’re a force for good in what you’re doing then you should keep going and do it. 

5. If you could choose your perfect staffroom, who would be in it?

I would have a staffroom with a combination of teachers of all ages and different stages in their career. Jonny Uttley, chief executive of The Education Alliance trust, is very good. He’s also very humble. He would be a really good catalyst in that school room. He puts staff first - he says you can’t put pupils first if you haven’t looked after your staff first. 

I don’t know if I really mean this, but part of me thinks I’d want the cynical old bugger, who would have sat in the corner and said lots of cynical things and I would have avoided like the plague. Maybe it’s because I’ve turned into that person a little bit myself. Often they are worth listening to and shouldn’t be dismissed. So though I might not consciously choose to have one in there, I would probably notice if they weren’t there and it would be a less rich conversation because actually a lot of their cynicism is based on experience, and that counts for quite a lot really.

6. What do you think are the best and worst aspects of our schools system?

The pandemic, in particular, just showed us how amazing school leaders and teachers can be when they’re up against it. 

I watched in awe when the first lockdown happened. It gave people permission to strip it all back to the real fundamentals of what [needs] to be in place to help children learn. Teachers played a heroic role. 

Right now it feels like all that brilliant potential isn’t being realised in the way it could be because there’s such a lack of capacity , linked to the lack of public value for teachers and school leaders. I think that most parents do value teachers and school leaders, but the way it gets painted by the media, you would think that there’s a real problem there.

7. Your own teachers aside, who in the world of education has influenced you the most?

Professor Anne Edwards - she was my first line manager when I came to work in higher education.

At the time I had a small baby and a toddler, and I was working part time. Anne was just so brilliant at understanding what it’s like being a woman who’s got to juggle all sorts of different things, and just so good at recognising that she needed to support me. 

At the same time, she was actually quite challenging as a boss and would scribble all over my work. But because she had that underlying care and empathy, she was just such a good role model to me and I’ve tried to carry on some of those traits in the way that I conduct my role now. 

I think it taught me about the quality of adversity and the importance of recognising different needs at different points in people’s lives, and some of that is lacking in the education system currently.

8. If you became education secretary tomorrow, what would you change?

There’s a lot of discussion about incentives to get people into the teaching profession. Rather than thinking about incentives, we need to think about enablers. 

All the people who come into the teaching profession share some moral purpose. Most people who come into the profession want to make a difference, whether it’s a difference within their subject or whether they just want to transform the lives of disadvantaged children.

I would take that as my starting point: what are the barriers preventing them from doing that? Money might be one of them , being able to work flexibly might be another , or being able to recognise your ethnicity in the workforce that you want to join.

9. What will our schools be like in 30 years’ time?

Regardless of however many years’ time, there will need to be some of the same basic ingredients. You’re going to have learners and you’re going to have teachers and you’re going to have a sense of a community of learning hopefully, and the excitement that comes with that.

We’ve seen how technology can enable different forms of learning. But there will be one thing that will definitely be the same: the teacher. 

Making sure that you have got a really good, well-supported, high-quality teacher in that classroom, whether it’s a real classroom or a virtual classroom - that won’t change. That will be just as important in 30 years’ time as it is now. 

10. What one person do you think has made the most difference to our schools over the past year?

School leaders of every description have just been phenomenal. I don’t know how they’ve kept the show on the road. They’ve bust a gut. They’re absolutely exhausted now. 

If you wanted a symbolic representation of school leaders - I’m an honorary member of the Headteachers’ Roundtable, which is a group of teachers who try to make a positive influence on policy - then it would be Caroline Derbyshire, who is the current chair of that group.

Sam Twiselton was speaking to Matilda Martin, a reporter at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 17 December 2021 issue