Six years ago when Teach First started, I was involved in their recruitment process for their first ever cohort, and then as a tutor. Although I thought it was a terrific idea, it wasn’t until I saw my own tutees teaching so effectively in schools, I knew it was. Even then I would never have predicted their meteoric rise in the graduate recruitment market to the point where they are now 14th in the Times top 100 recruiters. Their annual awards were held this week and as I was one of the judges, I was really pleased to see such a huge crowd of supporters, including my own company, and to see how fast they are expanding, not just across the UK, but internationally. In fact their international expansion is now being run by one of my ex tutees.

As always, they do a very polished job of presentations and one of their videos showed a number of teachers nominated for awards, actually at work. What struck me, and you can see it even on screen, was they all displayed exactly the same high level of intense engagement with their audience. Teaching has always been a complex skill, but I think we have only just begun to scratch the surface of what that skill actually consists of. And certainly from my experience, that intense, even demanding demeanour, is far more effective with children than the guide-on-the-side lameness so often trumpeted as a skill.