Debra

I've built my specialist experience across a range of settings over more than two decades — starting in mainstream boys' schools in the 2000s, teaching classes of statemented children (this was before EHCPs existed), through to three years as Director of Learning at a specialist school for children with Developmental Language Disorder, leading Humanities provision within a multi-disciplinary team of speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and psychotherapists. More recently, I've worked in specialist autism and ADHD settings in Surrey. Throughout, I've contributed to EHCP Annual Reviews as form tutor, writing and updating the Cognition and Learning sections and recommending changes where a student's needs had shifted.

My core specialism is students for whom the school environment itself is the barrier, not their ability — a child's genuine 'can't' is often misread by others as 'won't'. I work with anxiety-led responses to school, PDA, and trauma responses, and my experience here is two-fold: over 20 years of professional teaching across mainstream and SEND settings, matched by personal experience of these same challenges over most of that time. That combination — professional and lived — is what makes me confident in this space rather than just qualified for it.

I've built my specialist experience across a range of settings over more than two decades — starting in mainstream boys' schools in the 2000s, teaching classes of statemented children (this was before EHCPs existed), through to three years as Director of Learning at a specialist school for children with Developmental Language Disorder, leading Humanities provision within a multi-disciplinary team of speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and psychotherapists. More recently, I've worked in specialist autism and ADHD settings in Surrey. Throughout, I've contributed to EHCP Annual Reviews as form tutor, writing and updating the Cognition and Learning sections and recommending changes where a student's needs had shifted.

History and Humanities have been the constant thread through my whole career — I trained to teach it and have led it at every level, from Head of History to Director of Learning for Humanities, and I still sit as a Cambridge International Assistant Examiner for History and Pakistan Studies. Alongside that, I've built up huge experience teaching English, Maths and languages across mainstream classrooms, SEN settings and 1:1 tuition, so subject breadth has never been a limitation.

My qualifications include QTS (2003), a BA (Hons) in History and French Studies, and a Level 3 Certificate in Understanding Mental Health, alongside Gold-level Trauma-Informed Practice training, PDA-specific CPD, and accredited training in OCD awareness — still a widely under-recognised and misunderstood presentation in young people, and one I've seen present alongside sensory processing difficulties rather than in isolation. I've also completed additional National Autistic Society training focused specifically on autism in girls and women, another commonly missed presentation, and I hold PECS and Makaton qualifications reflecting my broader work in communication support.

Building a genuine relationship with a student is what makes the learning stick — not something that gets in its way — so I invest in that from the very first session, whatever the subject calls for. I firmly believe in protecting a child's home life from encroachment by school pressures, and I don't set homework: my job is to make the time we have together count, not to extend school demands into the one space that should stay theirs.

My approach starts with the relationship, not the curriculum. A student who feels safe, understood and genuinely liked will engage. One who doesn't, won't, however good the resource or the plan. I bring a genuinely careful, practiced eye for reading what a student needs in the moment: their mood, their energy, what's actually going on beneath a "won't." That comes with the discipline of never assuming I've understood a student until I actually have. So the first sessions with any student are about building that trust, reading what they need that day, and adjusting rather than pushing through a fixed agenda.

I never assume a student "won't" when the reality is often "can't." Many of the young people I work with have had bruising experiences with getting things wrong, so I build in small, genuine wins early and I'm endlessly patient about circling back to something in a different way if the first approach doesn't land. I don't give up on a student after one method hasn't worked. If anything, that's usually the point where I try something else entirely, rather than concluding the student is unwilling. I've seen, both professionally and personally, how easily a child can be written off early in their school career. Once a label like "won't engage" gets attached, it tends to follow a student, shaping how every professional afterward reads them, often long before the real picture is understood. Early judgements can be wrong, and a student written off at seven or eight can still be recognised, understood and helped to thrive at eleven, fourteen, or later still.

I hold firmly to the belief that students should be recognised as intelligent even when they're behind in their learning. Additional needs can mean a student's developmental maturity speeds up or slows down unevenly, a spiky profile rather than a flat one, and I plan around that rather than against it. I don't set homework, because I believe a child's home life should stay protected from school pressures, particularly for students who are already anxious about or avoidant of school. For students educated away from school, whether through EOTAS, EHE or home tuition, I keep a clear separation between the two spaces: home needs to remain home, not an extension of the classroom, not somewhere school pressures follow a student to. That boundary is often what allows a student to engage at all.

What makes a good tutor, to me, is adaptability without inconsistency. Knowing when a student needs energy and humour and when they need quiet steadiness, while staying reliably calm and unflappable underneath it. Trauma-informed practice, PDA-aware, low-demand strategies where appropriate, and genuine curiosity about how each individual student thinks. That's the toolkit, but the relationship is what makes any of it work, and I'm honest about the fact that not every match does. Real connection matters, and sometimes a student and tutor simply don't gel, however good the intentions or the approach on paper. I'd rather recognise that early and say so than persist somewhere it isn't working for the student's sake.

• QTS (2003) — Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP), Middlesex University

• BA (Hons) History and French Studies (1994), Lancaster University

• Level 3 Certificate in Understanding Mental Health (2026)

• Level 2 Certificate in Understanding Specific Learning Difficulties (2024)

• Thrive LDN "Gift of Reconnection" Trauma-Informed Practice training — Gold level (2026)

• Developing Trauma Informed Practice workshop — Silver Certificate, Nicola Lester Psychological Trauma Consultancy (2026)

• Trauma Awareness Training — Bronze Certificate, Nicola Lester Psychological Trauma Consultancy (2026)

• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Awareness, Accredited Certificate, Next Generation Learning (2026)

• National Autistic Society (NAS) — Women and Girls on the Autism Spectrum, CPD Certificate (2026)

• Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) Awareness training (2023)

• Cyberbullying and pupils with SEND: prevention and early intervention (2023)

• Fundamentals of Dyslexia Awareness (2020)

• PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System), Level 1 Certificate (2019); continued to Level 2 through ongoing CPD at Moor House School and College (2020–2023)

• MAKATON Teacher Training Certificate (2017, with refreshers 2020–2022)

• TESOL Certificate (1994)

• Team Teach Certificate (2018, 2022)

• Advanced Safeguarding, Child Protection and Prevent (Advanced Level, Level 2), Academize (2026)

• NSPCC Learning — Protecting Children in Entertainment, Certificate of Achievement (2026)