At school, I was really inspired by my woodwork teacher. I went on to a local FE college to do a BTec in furniture making/design and then took a specialist restoration diploma at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation. Furniture making is also very much about problem-solving and precision working - the sort of skills that people with dyslexia (I have the condition) often excel at. Every piece of furniture is a new item with its own unique problems, so you have to understand that and resolve them - it’s never boring! After the course in around 1989, I spent two years as a technical teacher for Voluntary Service Overseas in Uganda, then worked there for a charity building and running vocational training centres mainly for people with disabilities. I moved on to Tanzania, Ukraine, Jordan - mostly training for commercial companies - and then returned to Africa. After 13 years overseas I came back to the UK to start teaching at Winchester (initially part-time for three years).
When I arrived, the courses were largely attended by DIY enthusiasts as vocational training had declined. Over time I helped change the courses we offered to make them more vocational, rewrote City and Guilds (C&G) syllabuses and, mostly recently, helped compile the future craft and design T-level courses. Now 80% of our course students are school-leavers, and the rest adult learners (aged mid- to late 20s plus a few older students) with many seeking a career change. My department has grown hugely across three campuses and numerically is one of the nation’s largest with 160 students.
In Africa I ended up becoming manager of a centre, designing and physically building training facilities, setting up all the courses and then establishing other centres; I had a huge amount of independence. But in the UK I had to get used to being a basic teacher again, doing my teacher training PGCE qualification, and building up from there.
As a deputy head of learning, I manage a team of 10 yet still teach two days a week, including on first year level 1 courses. We run level 1-3 C&G courses (changing to T-levels in 2023). Level 1 (normally two groups of 11-12 students per class) focus mainly on basic hand skills (learning through making mistakes!), understanding equipment technology, materials, health and safety (hugely important), and workshop sessions - 80% of the course is practical with 20% theory (eg timber technology, workshop geometry and drawing techniques, plus use of computer-aided design (CAD) and CNC (computer-driven) cutting machines, and eye-hand coordination skills. Level 2 (15-18 students per class) focuses on traditional wood machining (planes, saws etc) and using machines to make furniture, while level 3 (15-18 students) offers more on product design and production, including more individual bespoke design.
I get in about 8am and start teaching at 9.15am till 10.30 , take a break and then go through to 12.30pm for a 45-minute lunch break before. I then return with my students to the workshop until 4.30pm, including an optional 15-minute break. Nothing beats time in the workshop. We officially stop work at 5pm but I normally get back much later! We moved all theory online at level 1 when working over three campuses - my day a week with level 1 learners is spent mainly in the workshop. I split them into groups of 2 or 3, according to the speed they can work at, give them a project, and demo making joints. I’ll mark up a mortice and tenon joint, for example, demo it maybe twice (once with a commentary, once without) and build up the activity in phases. I particularly encourage peer assessment.
We’ve adopted steam bending on a large scale to make chair backs, working quite closely with outside companies. In normal times we make regular factory visits but over the past year contact all activities have all been digital and companies have even presented online. I’ve attended formal college CPD sessions and as WorldSkills UK training manager I have developed assessment for excellence criteria - I’ve helped devise descriptors on how to mark a piece of furniture that rewards real craft skills, flair and quality at different levels - it’s moving away from judging entries only on the number of boxes it ticks on the marking sheet.
Producing physical bits of furniture and inputting their own influence.
Watching students make steady progress as they get closer to a finished product. Unlike, say, IT skills that can be picked up and then used for fairly quick results, making furniture takes time - the slow burn towards a sense of achievement is really rewarding. We actually talk about achievement in terms of work rather than by the end of a session. Well over 80% of our students get jobs in the industry and since covid started it’s gone crazy; every week I get another employer asking about potential recruits. The industry has boomed. Many people now want home offices, they’ve spent more time at home and, if employed, are likely to have money they haven’t spent during the pandemic.
One was when I realised Word Skills authorities had not been marking for excellence but for the amount done. Another has been understanding the effect on students’ progress of letting them take ownership of their own learning in WorldSkills - we’ve been really successful in past competitions with gold and bronze medals and I’ve been asking why we’ve had so much success.
Time in the workshop! It’s including enough of it in the curriculum for students to repeatedly practise their skills to get perfect. Yet time is being constantly chipped away by things like GCSE retakes and other online modules that they all have to do.
Visiting a local company’s workshop and finding three former students working there who I’d thought would probably not enter the industry - but they’d done a couple of years at college, maybe got work in another field and then returned to furniture making. Being elected chief expert for WorldSkills International in cabinet making by my peers from around the world, gaining an MBE for services to WorldSkills and helping my students win two gold and one bronze WorldSkills medals.
Visiting other countries to see how they are developing their vocational training, comparing overseas methods with the UK’s strength in fostering problem-solving skills in our students, and getting involved in devising T-level courses.
Patience, the ability to analyse practical tasks (eg making a dovetail joint) and breaking them down into easily digestible chunks. Asking students questions the right way - some you can challenge while others will need your support. Understanding the importance of helping students learn from their ‘mistakes’ - which are really opportunities to grow and pick up new skills. They may well do a perfect job first time round but often don’t repeat it next time because they haven’t actually ‘learnt’ the right technique.
You need recent commercial workshop experience and a desire to pass on your skills. A passion for your subject - so if a staff member won the lottery they’d still want to carry on making furniture. I encourage all my staff to promote peer-to-peer assessment. You have to teach the students how to look and how to see in order to identify what level of craftmanship is the goal. It’s a skill you have to teach. Assessing each others’ projects teaches them to judge and recognise quality when they see it; they then start comparing and this helps drive up their own standards. I also did a part-time degree in social science with politics - I wanted to challenge myself to do something academic largely because of my dyslexia. My degree later helped me get my one-day-a-week role as a high performance WorldSkills coach.
What makes you passionate about furniture making?
Seeing this department grow and provide students with a career for life.
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