07709078549
ABOUT
What Alison can Offer
Alison specialises in helping young people overcome barriers to their learning. She was formerly Head of Educational Support at Oundle School and, prior to that, Head of Individual Learning at the Peterborough School. She has a current practising certificate qualifying her to diagnose specific learning difficulties for both school and university. She also has an BA from Oxford University in Psychology, a Post Graduate Certificate from Cambridge University in Education and a Diploma awarded by OCR in teaching and assessing learners with specific learning difficulties.
'Deeply grateful' does sum it up! It has been genuinely wonderful to witness the way in which a little girl who could easily get lost in any class has grown in the healthiest of self-belief, and developed into an adolescent who really feels the benefit and power of the right sort of hard work.
Parent
Alison has delivered several sessions to our SCITT trainee teachers on how to adapt their teaching to ensure their classroom is an inclusive one. Her workshops are always popular and she is able to break down her ideas for supporting pupils into simple steps and illustrate them with examples from her vast experience.
Sara Davidson, Director of SCITTs
Thank you so much for the constant, unfailing support over the last few years. It has been hugely appreciated.
O, 16, Pupil
Our son arrived aged 13, to interview for a place at Oundle School. Since he was small, he’d long held ambitions to become an academic scientist but his tricky mix of individual needs, dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADHD seemed destined to hamper him. He’d grown increasingly disheartened, it looked likely his learning differences were set to become bigger obstacles as he progressed through the school system and it seemed unlikely he’d ever properly achieve his academic potential or fulfil his dreams. Indeed despite his desire to do well, several senior schools had been unwilling to consider him. Oundle Admissions however encouraged us to apply. They sent us to meet Alison Taylor then the School’s Head of Learning Support. Alison had already taken the time to read his lengthy Ed Psych reports before we met her, this certainly impressed me. After our chat, she turned to my son and said “You are someone who would be very welcome here, you would fit in well and there’s no reason why you won’t do extremely well.” It was the first time he'd received such encouragement from a senior school teacher and the first time he’d been told that he wouldn’t be regarded as an 'educational needs problem'. He’d found someone who believed in him. Alison didn’t take long to understand my son and thanks to her experience and intuition she already knew what she could do to help him. There is no doubt that in Alison we'd found an educator with a huge amount of expertise and experience in educational support and we'd also found a delightful, patient and extremely caring person too. What we didn't know then however was quite how brilliant Alison would be. Over the past five years Alison has had an extraordinary and transforming influence on my son, the trajectory of his school career, on his self-esteem and on his future. Alison and he have worked together through GCSEs and now A Levels with exceptional results. Alison began by showing him effective ways to study, to read, to write essays, to revise, to interpret accurately and practice exam questions and as the academic requirements and pressures on him have changed, she constantly produces new ideas and tools to help him study and problem solve. Alison has also helped him become far more independent. She has showed him ways to organise himself and to seek, discover and practice his own ways of learning. Above all she has given him the confidence to believe that he can and will excel as long as he desires to do so and she is always available to support him when he finds the going tough. Thanks to Alison he is approaching the end of his school career a confident, happy and fulfilled young man. And thanks to all that Alison has taught him, he now looks forward to entering higher education and adult life, full of optimism and excitement and with his eagerness to achieve much and his love of learning undimmed. It's all credit to Alison that despite my son's significant and various individual needs, dyslexia, ADHD and dysgraphia, he gained a set of all A stars in his GCSEs. He was awarded a school Academic Exhibition upon entering 6th Form. With Alison’s help he continues to study for an ambitious four A-Levels including 3 science subjects and maths. He recently achieved 48 out of a possible 50 for his Extended Personal Qualification essay, equivalent to an A star. Alison helped him throughout the arduous process of researching and writing his essay showing him how to organise all his complex material and his many thoughts and ideas for this ambitious project whilst simultaneously studying four A-Levels. Now in his final few months of school, Alison is continuing to support and mentor him. Perhaps the greatest testament to Alison’s influence, on top of all that she has so far helped him to achieve, is the fact that my son himself is now volunteering and mentoring young children in a special needs school. There can surely be no greater compliment paid by a student to his teacher! Our whole family will forever be grateful to Alison for her patience, expertise and kindness and all that she has taught our son. Alison’s profound influence will not only continue to benefit him as he enters higher education, what she has taught him will also without doubt support him for the rest of his life. Please do not hesitate to contact me at sallyjohnston@me.com for any queries. I’d be delighted to respond.