Having the attention span of a toddler full of Haribos, plus zero ambition to climb the corporate ladder, I tend to move jobs every few years. I’m lucky that I live in a part of the country that has easy access to loads of colleges and other learning provisions. With every new move there’s new experiences to be grasped and always loads to learn.

I’ve done all sorts of FE teaching: functional skills with 16 to 18-year-olds of all vocational specialisms in colleges; music and drama with adults who have learning difficulties in community settings, and with similar groups in a colleges; specialist support one-to-one work with young people taking English GCSE; maths and English with 12 to 16-year-old males in an alternative provision; art with adults who have profound disabilities in residential care settings; I’ve even led exercise sessions to gangs of terrifying elderly ladies.

With the adult groups I’m teaching at the mo - entry level functional skills English to adults in a college - I’ve noticed something unusual happening. Every single week, every single one of them is making progress. Some of the progress is lightbulby, some of it is really, really tiny. But it’s there. It’s measurable. I can see it and more importantly so can they.

Some resistance

Now don’t assume that because I’m teaching adults, that my job is to host a glorified book club. We’re not sipping Earl Grey and chortling over a Hobnob. In fact, no one, except me, is there of their own volition. My adults are there because Job Centre Plus will stop their benefits if they don’t attend. Some are understandably resistant, some are frustrated, some are eager, but during the session everyone contributes. All of this is underpinned by a stable, welcoming dynamic fostered by an exceptionally efficient department, supportive both to me as the new kid on the block, and to every student. 

I’m not the best teacher in the world by any means, but think I’m quite good at my job. I’ve always got decent pass rates from every student group I’ve taught. But I never remember getting these sort of results, where you can feel the learning in the air. It’s taken me ages to realise what’s going on.

The difference is that these students are placed on the level of qualification that is appropriate in order to build on their existing skills. If the online tools assess them as entry 1 and the initial assessments taking place in the classroom do the same, then they are placed on a qualification at a level that they can reasonably, with the time allowed and distance that needs to be travelled, have a fair chance of attaining. It’s usually one higher than their initial assessment, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all decision. It’s based on a range of other factors within their profiles, their personal preferences and our professional judgement.

Conveyor belt

I’ve become so used to students being chucked on a qualification conveyor belt, because of funding factors that don’t take the individual into consideration (many on levels they’ve no hope of passing), that this feels like a luxury. There is so much room for creative, ambitious, personalised teaching that still meets all the syllabus requirements, when exams are a secondary focus and learning is the primary one.

Once I realised that the only difference was the level and scope of qualification, I got sad thinking about the GCSE situation and the way that, because of a dodgy policy, so many students aren’t given the chance to really learn and teachers the chance to really teach.

My students’ English skills are spiky. Some struggle to reach an entry 1 in their writing but are reading at level 2. Some write well but lack the confidence to communicate verbally. Most believe that they’re “crap at English”. They’re not.

Quick improvement

I told them when they started that if they can spell a one syllable word, they can spell almost any word. By the third week they could all spell half a dozen or more level 2 words - sophisticated, accommodation, environment, embarrassing, communication, difficulty. I want them to feel the opposite of infantilised and get some big confidence wins under their belts from the start. I’ve got an entry 2 student reading Pride and Prejudice at the moment. I set another the task of reading the first 30 pages of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by the end of the holidays. She came into class the next day having read the first 100 pages. Neither have read a book before in their lives.

I want my sessions to give my students a kick up the backside and show them that through learning they have more options than they initially thought they had. I want them to think differently about their own academic skills and their potential to develop further. We’re on a cycle of motivating each other to learn more, to put the work in, and to aim higher. And after a prolonged period of just plodding on with my pedagogy, teaching these students has brought my curiosity in the craft back to life.

Sarah Simons works in colleges and adult community education in the East Midlands and is the director of UKFEchat. She tweets @MrsSarahSimons