Welcome to the West Midlands!

On Friday it finally happened. After a day of constantly refreshing my email, and getting absolutely no work done, that long-awaited email landed in my inbox. The subject: 'Welcome to the West Midlands'.  First thoughts were a mixture of 'oh, it's not London' ' thank god it's not Yorkshire and the Humber' (Still not entirely sure what the Humber is!) 'and yes! finally I know where i'll be living and teaching for the next 2 years'!

If you've spoken to me at all in the last 6 months you will no doubt have heard that I have been accepted onto the Teach First Leadership Development Programme (LDP for us coolcats)! Maybe you haven't heard of it? Most people I speak to know someone who did Teach First, and they always comment on how they had the best 2 years of their lives! The people you speak to who participated themselves, whilst confirming the amazing-ness of the programme, speak of it as the hardest, most challenging 2 years of their lives which was not without its fair share of tears! I know it's going to be a tough few years, but whoever I speak to, everyone confirms that it is worth it more than 100 times over!

For those of you that don't know, Teach First is a charity organisation with a mission to erradicate educational disadvantage across the UK. For a school to be eligible for partnership with Teach First, at least 50% of pupils must come from the lowest 30% of the IDACI (Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index), prioritising those schools with higher levels of deprivation. Educational disadvantage is a complex, multi-faceted problem but at its heart lies a simple truth: a child born into a less-affluent family is statistically less likely to do well at school. That sad fact will, in turn, mean that their choices and future will be limited in ways that are deep, lasting and unjust.

 I could shower you with statistics about educational disadvantage, here are just a couple for good measure:

• Just 16% of young people eligible for free school meals progress to university, compared with 96% of those from independent schools. 
• 1 in 6 young people leave school not being able to read or write properly. 
• Just 24% of pupils receiving free school meals achieved the benchmark 5 A*-C grades at GCSE, less than half the average rate.

I cringe at newspaper articles which report on Teach First 'parachuting in young teachers to tackle Britain's toughest schools' - Yes we arrive with a mission, and an aim for change, but I'm under no delusion that I know everything about teaching; yes I have had some snippets of experience, but in the grand scale of things that counts for very little. These 2 years will be a steep learning curve for me - and hopefully in return I can make a difference to the lives of the children I teach.

The application process has been a long one, and quite rightly so, but now I have a region and a Teach First hoody I really feel part of the TF Community and am eager to get going! All that is left to do is make sure I get that pesky 2:1, we then have an intensive 6 week course next summer and as of September 2013 I will be a real life actual grown up teacher in a Primary School somewhere in the West Midlands!

So I guess it is here that Miss Richards is born! How exciting and incredibly daunting!!