Former Oxford PGCE student wins national teaching award
22 Oct 07
Nick Wergan, a former student from the PGCE teaching course in Oxford’s Department of Education, has won the Training and Development Agency for School’s Award for Outstanding New Teacher of the Year. He received a Plato, known as the ‘Oscars for teachers’, from Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families in a televised ceremony on BBC 2 on 21 October.
Nick ran an equity sales desk on a City trading floor before training at Oxford as a PGCE English student in 2003-2004. The Training and Development Agency for Schools is an executive non-departmental public body established to raise standards in schools by attracting able and committed people to teaching. The national winners represented outstanding teachers; headteachers; teaching assistants; governors and schools.
Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, who presented the Award, said: ‘I am delighted to add my voice to the thousands of others saying “thank you” to inspirational teachers, teaching assistants and school governors at the Teaching Awards national ceremony for 2007.’
Nick joined Sackville School in East Grinstead, West Sussex, in 2004 as a classroom teacher and was recently promoted to become the Head of English. He said his City trading skills stand him in great stead in the classroom, where as an English teacher he has to “sell” books to children. Nick has maintained his links with Oxford University and returned to the Department of Education in April this year to talk to current PGCE students.
His Tutor, Viv Ellis from Oxford’s Department of Education, said: ‘He was an exceptionally committed and talented PGCE student who took advantage of every opportunity provided by the PGCE course. He was placed in two local comprehensive schools and forged excellent relationships with staff and students in both. He is one of several students who joins our department each year who make successful changes of career – in Nick’s case, from running a financial trading desk in the City.’
Under his teaching, grades in English have shot up and many more pupils now want to study the subject at A-level and university. Pupils say his lessons fly by, and it was a pupil who nominated him for a Teaching Award. His lessons are lively and engaging, and use such a wide variety of techniques – rock music to teach Shakespearian sonnets that his pupils learn without even realising they are doing it.
Nick is continuing his education at Sussex University for an MA focusing on how the voice of students with emotional and behavioural problems can be encouraged and heard – and he helps run a vineyard, where he has just completed specialist training in the use of pesticides.