Name John Ninian

in what years did you work for Mid Essex ITT / support a trainee?  From 2002 first at Shenfield and then carrying on when the consortium moved to Braintree, ending finally in 2024.

Which school(s) did you work in? Cranbrook College, a small independent school in Ilford with a multi-cultural intake (eventually as Deputy Head) and then from 2002 as (Head of English) at a comprehensive, Shenfield High School. I did 28 and 22 years respectively making a grand total of 50 years at the chalkface. The blackboards and chalk have long since gone indicating the concept of huge changes in this period. Incidentally it was not unknown then for teachers to ping a small piece of chalk at a pupil found not to be paying proper attention. Safeguarding had not been heard of!

Thinking back to your time working with Mid Essex ITT, can you share with us about a highlight, fond memory or funny story?  My fondest memories are of delivering  an annual training session on “motivation and engagement” to a new cohort about to begin their B placements. The first thing I would tell them was that MEITT had got the session wrong. This would produce a surprised silence in the audience; I would then explain that these words were not good enough and point them to Teachers' Standards 1 where they would find their real goal which is to “inspire.” In doing this of course I was creating a problem for myself so I advised them  that if they did not find the session inspiring to write in their feedback that MEITT should not ask me back. Pleasingly I did this for a number of years and trainees who later came to work at Shenfield would tell me how this session had reminded them of why they wanted to teach in the first place. We ask students to “be the best they can be” and this must also apply to teachers.

What was teacher training like when you supported trainees? What were the buzzwords, latest theories or popular pedagogy? When I undertook my own PGCE, in the dim and distant past, it was very unco-ordinated with rambling discussions and very limited use of words like “pedagogy.” Naturally I enjoyed this as it was a continuation of the easy student life of the sixties and early seventies. However not to be recommended as a model for training! The main changes in the years of delivering sessions and mentoring trainees have been the use of research data to underpin the ideology and the introduction of theories like “deliberate practice.” All of which is well and good up to a point but of course research theories change and are debunked by successive generations. I did make use of “deliberate practice” in the last couple of years and found it to have some value but many of my colleagues were sceptical. I think there is a danger that modern training becomes formulaic, that we overload students with theory and that we do not make enough use of buzzwords like “enjoyment”  “fun” and “passion” all of which are at the heart  of the very best teaching.

At the end of the day, although much has changed in education, the fundamental principles of teaching have remained unchanged since the time of Socrates some 2,000 years ago. He would gather his acolytes around him and proceed to develop their understanding through questioning. Real learning stems from a close relationship between the teacher and the pupils and depends on the subtle use of questioning, drawing in all members of the class, to consolidate knowledge and further independent thinking.

Thinking back to this time, what was your key takeaway from Mid Essex ITT? The ways in which ITT has developed and the sheer professionalism of the team at Notley. They fully deserved their Ofsted grading and the future of training is in good hands. It has been a pleasure to work with the team down the years.

Can you tell us a bit more about what you are doing now? I have recently retired at the age of 72 with some degree of apprehension as I finally go out into the big wide world. I was still enjoying all aspects of teaching but I wanted to depart before I lost my enthusiasm and passion. Now that our entrants will have a retirement age of 67 or 68 I wanted to show that this is not only possible but something to be embraced positively. What am I doing? Lots of gardening through the summer and autumn, mainly turning myself into a lawn expert. Leisure activities through U3a, a national organisation which I had not heard of before, which means that I now mix almost entirely with much older people, very different from the class-room.