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People often ask me about how I
came to pioneer the THRASS programme (and, yes, it does sound like THRASH and
TRASH!) and how the various THRASS resources developed, to what they are today.
So here goes - In 1986,
I was a Lecturer in Psychology and Educational Psychologist at the West Cheshire
College, Chester, England. Up until joining the FE sector in 1983, I had
been a secondary school teacher for three years, in a comprehensive in the
London Borough of Bromley, and I had completed eighteen months of clinical
training to become an educational psychologist (the MSc course, Child
Development with Clinical Studies, was supervised by inspiring staff from Essex
Educational Psychology Service and the Institute of Education, University of
London).
As a teacher, I taught Physical Education throughout the school and 'A/O' Level
and 'A' Level Psychology to the Sixth Form. My first degree was in Psychology, a
BA Hons degree from Manchester Polytechnic (now the Manchester Metropolitan
University). I studied for my PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Edcation) at
the University of Loughborough, specialising in Physical Education/Geography
(where I met my wife, Hilary, a fellow student on teaching practice, at a middle
school in Leicester).
During my ten years at the West Cheshire College, I was very much involved in
the local and national examination of 'A/O' Level and 'A' Level Psychology (with
the A.E.B, the Associated Examining Board). At 'A/O' Level, I became the
national Senior Examiner for Psychology: Child Development (Paper 1). At 'A'
Level, I was an Assistant Examiner (for Paper 2) and a Visiting Examiner (for
Paper 3). Paper 3 was the Experiment Design & Statistics part of the
examination. For several years, I was responsible for overseeing the '30-minute
oral examinations' of the candidates, in a fair number of schools and colleges
in the North West of England (including parts of Greater Manchester, Merseyside
and Cheshire).
Related to this, I was one of the three people (known as the Surrey Consortium)
to write the original 'A' Level Physical Education syllabus. I was responsible
for the Psychological Aspects part of the syllabus and I produced the specimen
papers and mark schemes. West Cheshire College, Chester, was one of only four
centres, nationwide, to pilot the original syllabus (which was later combined
with the Sports Studies proposal). My summary paper, of the reactions to the proposed
'A' Level, from questionnaires sent to all colleges and universities offering
degrees, was published in the British Journal of Physical Education (BJPE). Back
to 1986, in my Annual Review at the West Cheshire College, my line manager, the Head of Student Services,
asked if I had considered giving some remedial help to the students with
dyslexia/literacy difficulties rather than just assessing them, to obtain
norm-referenced
statistical information for examination boards (e.g. AEB, JMB, Oxford, Cambridge,
City & Guilds and BTEC), colleges, universities and
potential employers. My
investigations led to the the Dyslexia Institute Diploma course (and the associated
British Dyslexia
Association Diploma), one-day-a-week for 30 weeks. We had a hard-working and
experienced team at the West Cheshire College and, at one time, we were the
biggest centre for 'A' Level Psychology in the country. The demand for
Psychology was, once again, so high that I had to do the diploma in my own time,
by taking on two evening classes (to the one I already had) to make up for the
day that I was out! I travelled to the other side of
Cheshire, one-day-a-week, only to be given (as anyone will know if they have
done the Diploma) the equivalent of another day's work when I got there - what
with the background reading, practical work, preparation for the teaching
practices and
the assignments!
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