Phil Beadle is the controversial Teacher of the Year who swears a lot, abhors poor grammar and despises private education. He tells Cassandra Jardine how parents can help their children shine at school.

On the sofa of Phil Beadle’s terraced house in Catford, south London, lies a Teach your Child to Read book for five to sixes. Next to it is a half-used sheet of silver stars. When his five-year-old son, Len, returns from school, he will sit down with him and work through another page or two. “He hasn’t made a fantastic start at school,” Beadle admits. “This happens to many middle kids.”

Pushing aside a pile of ironing so we can sit at the table, Beadle explains that, if he sounds a trifle anxious, it’s because his eldest son, Bas, got off to more of a flying start educationally. He thinks he knows why. A few years ago he was more in touch with what he jokingly calls his “inner Nazi”, so he insisted that the boy practise reading every single day, whether he liked it or not. The result? “Aged nine, he has a near adult reading age.” …

… Despite traces of scepticism, Beadle, 42, is a fervent believer in parental involvement in education, partly because his mother taught him to read before he started school. “I can still recall the teacher’s look of astonishment, along with my own sense of pride, on my first day at school,” he says. Appropriately, then, it is to Olive Bridget Beadle, the woman who believed her son was special, that Phil has dedicated his entertaining and practical book on how parents can help children shine at school…

Source: Telegraph.co.uk
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