Concordia
Merchant Taylors’ School
Ali
Jaffer
Ali Ja er
(2001-2006) studied Law at Cambridge and began his
career as a Spanish teacher on the Teach First scheme. After a
brief period training as a lawyer in the City he decided to return
to education and has been one of the driving forces behind the
Chapeltown Academy in She£eld, which has recently been given
the go-ahead by the Department of Education and will open its
doors in September
half term trip to Santander when I insisted
two of the Year 8 lads asked for the “código
wifi” themselves from the hotel sta. They
practised and practised and decided to
take one word each. Eventually they found
the courage to approach the receptionist.
And, like some sort of Laurel and Hardy
act, finally, saying alternate words, made
the request in perfect Spanish! It was only
a simple question but knowing they had
been understood, they high-fived each
other with utter delight and gratefully
received the password. That was one of
my special moments. Another was seeing
the demonstrable impact of remorseless
enthusiasm: following our languages drive,
over 60 had opted for Spanish in the new
Year 10 (these students are now about to sit
their GCSEs).
But there were many more special
learn how to teach and enable the children
in their charge to aspire and achieve. I
was one of these and was assigned to
Yewlands Technology College, an 11-16
comprehensive in Parson Cross, She
eld.
The estate, about 7 miles north of the city
centre is, in many ways, “typical”. It is
almost entirely populated by white working
class families, and characterised by low
levels of achievement and employment and
high levels of crime.
Its children, however, are remarkably
impressive. At Taylors’, I had been
ably taught Spanish by Mark English,
Monica Castro, Val Klein and Nick
Gregory and therefore it was to be my
subject of choice. Given I had little
clue what I was doing in the first term,
the students’ disdain for me was to be
entirely expected. “What’s the f***** point
sir, the whole world speaks English?”
to “you can shove that foreign up your
ar**” were among some of the kinder
remarks. Understandably. Why should
they care? Fewer than 12 students opted
to pursue a language to GCSE and it
was totally irrelevant to their lives. My
colleague and I (also on the Teach First
programme) naively ploughed on. In
doing so, we forced four trips to Spain
over the two years, turned International
Day of Languages into an International
Week of Languages, hosted various guest
speakers and ran a parents’ twilight
course. With so much to do, and a blank
canvas to work with, we grew to love it.
My favourite Spanish moment came on a
wonder if I’m alone in defining and
reflecting on my life with reference to
the Football World Cup. 2002 saw Mr
Husbands decide to substitute Fourth
Form Latin with the orchestration
of a mass decamp to what became
a raucous Lecture Theatre for the
chance to see Beckham and the troops
avenge Argentina’s defeat four years
previously. By 2006, most of my
thoroughly enjoyable career at Taylors’
had come to an end but I remember
being particularly irked that the
opening ceremony and first game of
Germany 2006 unhelpfully coincided
with an A-Level exam.
By the time the first vuvuzela was hooted
in South Africa, I had just graduated from
Magdalene, Cambridge and was about
to embark on the Teach First graduate
programme. The very first day of our
intensive six week training camp was
Sunday June 27th – the day of that horrible
defeat to Germany in Bloemfontein and the
Lampard goal that never was.
Teach First is a charity whose mission
is to eradicate educational disadvantage.
It believes that no child’s socio-economic
background should determine their
life chances. It’s hard to disagree with
that. Their methods are varied (and
disputed) but their principal one is
to plant bright-eyed, bushy-tailed yet
seriously unsuspecting graduates into the
classrooms of the most challenging schools
in the country. Their hope is that they will
I
Despite the
supportiveness
of the firm I
desperately missed
the language, the
students and the
responsibility.
