Deputy Head of Secondary
Rosemary Butcher,
I was delighted to join the Europa School UK in September 2019; I have enjoyed a varied career in different fields of education and this is an exciting opportunity for me to use the breadth of experience I have gained in a new and stimulating environment.
As well as teaching secondary English, my previous experience included working for Cambridge University, where I headed up their widening participation programme. In this role I started to develop an interest in more able learners – then coined the “gifted and talented” – which led me to London to work as a secondary consultant in the London borough of Lambeth specialising in the more able, gifted and talented under the Excellence in Cities programme.
Family relocation took us to Brussels, London and Warwickshire, and I returned to the classroom and to teaching English; I particularly enjoyed my experience teaching in a bilingual French College in London. Moving to Warwickshire I found a new role in teacher training at the University of Warwick and briefly in South Africa.
At the same time I developed my research interests in transition, social mobility, the more able and English. These are some of the issues fundamental to education and with reference not just to the UK but on a global level and to the future we are educating young people for.
Throughout my career I have remained a passionate reader and it has been a pleasure to return to teaching literature at a higher level. It has also been exciting to apply theory to practice; teaching is a never-ending learning process and I continue to be amazed by the energy and creativity of the teachers I work with, and of course the students we teach.
Tanya Simpson