Alumni profile: Kaushi Silva

Why did you choose to study at the UCL Institute of Education (IOE)?

As a London Headteacher, I was often looking for trainee teachers to work in my school. Our school had a strong partnership with the IOE, taking more than six student teachers for teaching practice each year, and therefore I knew the initial teacher training programme and its content well.  The IOE had provided the best trainee teachers to my school and it was the obvious choice when I came to select an MA course for myself.

It also helped that, as a Camden Headteacher, I could get to the IOE within fifteen minutes, after a long day at school!

How did your study at the IOE benefit your career development?

What was special about my Educational Leadership MA was the opportunity to relate theory and practice, through an analysis of research and from challenging conversations with other schools leaders and the tutors.

I was a full-time Headteacher, focussed on raising standards in an inner city school serving a community with over half the pupils coming from poor backgrounds and dealing with the many changes that the government dictated to us. The course enabled me to make sense of my constantly changing professional world and continue to ensure that our children met their full potential.

I extended the course and spent an extra year just focusing on my dissertation about Headteachers’ values, which was awarded a distinction and won an NCSL Practitioners’ Research prize.

Since leaving Headship in London, I have worked in several local authorities as a school improvement officer, supporting and challenging other Headteachers in delivering high standards for their students. My career has led me to working with schools and governments across the world – Jamaica, Malaysia, Thailand, India and the UAE, to name a few – training Headteachers and supporting school improvement initiatives.  In many of those conversations, I refer back to the thought pieces and research from my MA days.

How do you maintain your passion for education?

I think that if you believe, as I do, that every child has the ability to achieve their highest potential, then as a teacher, you engage in a constant and restless dialogue with yourself and your colleagues... about the curriculum, your classroom, your planning for assessment and your teaching... just to make sure that every child achieves. It’s that simple!

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