Rachel Hurrell

About Me

I joined Castle View in 2011 after having worked for 4 and a half years as teacher of English as a foreign language. I spent two years in Hong Kong teaching students ages 3-16, followed by over two years in London teaching pre-sessional English as an additional language to adults. In this capacity, I was mainly teaching grammar from elementary to upper –intermediate.

My work at Castle View is extremely dynamic within the English and Languages area as well as whole school. I am a prominent aspect of the development of teaching and learning across the school and am co-leading the development of the curriculum in English. As Subject leader for English Literature our results have risen by 68% in 3 years, achieving 80% A*-C grade in 2015 with a year 10 cohort. This was achieved through the leading of detailed tracking and intervention as well as tightly-focused curriculum design. Our language results are consistently above the National Average despite students joining us in KS3 significantly below. This again has been achieved through outstanding team work and strategic interventions and planning. In 2013 the English Curriculum area was recognised as ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted.

My role as Professional Tutor lends itself heavily to coaching and mentoring – notably, not just trainees and NQTs but with colleagues across the school whom are identified as requiring support. I lead this mainly through reflective practice which entails on-going action research projects as well as a weekly internal training timetable that I coordinated and is delivered by myself and other specialists within the school. I co-ordinate frequent ‘Sharing Best Practice’ sessions; encouraging whole school collaboration and am also running CPD sessions with Essex ITT for trainee teachers.

I work within and am a great supporter of school networks to help raise attainment and develop pedagogical practice under the framework of the reformed GCSE in both English Language and Literature.