The National Teaching Awards are now in their fourth year, but some school staff still feel ambivalent about them. The most frequent criticism is that teachers depend on each other, that they are part of a team, that it’s misleading to identify individuals as stars. Teaching isn’t like that - or, if it is, there are stars unsung in every staffroom.

The critics forget two things. The first is that there really are outstanding teachers. Almost everybody remembers one - the man or woman who lit a spark in us, opened doors to new horizons, encouraged us, lent us self-belief. The second, self-evident to anyone who has watched the annual awards presentations, is that without exception the winners make a point of acknowledging the contribution of their colleagues and pupils. “This award isn’t for me,” they tell the cameras. “It’s for the team I work with, it’s for the community, it’s for my school.” And it’s not false modesty, either. We know they mean it.

It is also literally true. Apart from the kudos of a Plato trophy (which almost invariably is displayed in the winners’ schools) and the bonus of the laptop computer that every regional winner gets, the awards themselves go directly to the winners’ schools. Last year, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the 100 or so schools that produced regional title-holders shared pound;230,000 between them - the 11 national winners’ schools then received an extra pound;13,000, plus an interactive whiteboard and a digital camera. For many schools, that’s a mind-boggling sum.

So how do they spend it? Sometimes, unsurprisingly, the windfall goes on basics. At Brierley Hill primary in Staffordshire, where Audrey Windridge last year won the West Midlands regional award for working with parents and the community, the priority has been to refurbish the school hall - “to repair the peeling walls, replace our faded curtains, and put up a board for each class to display the work it’s proud of”.

Carnforth high school, Lancashire, where Kim Nicholson won last year’s north-west regional secondary teacher of the year award, has bought library books. At Bushey Meads school in Hertfordshire (Lorraine Beasley, secondary teacher of the year in the south-east), it is key stage 3 literacy materials, OHP trolleys and new curtains.

Often, there has been a focus on special needs. At Nether Hall school in Leicester (Sue Elgar, learning support assistant in the East Midlands), the winner’s pound;2,000 has been spent on ICT resources “to enable our profoundly disabled students with special needs to communicate - things like ‘jelly bean’ switches and fittings for wheelchairs, or table tops to allow students to operate equipment with their head or chin or elbow”.

The John Wilkinson primary school (Maria Pugh, learning support assistant in the West Midlands) has the same priority - “equipment to support the Fun Club activities we organise for children with motor co-ordination difficulties”. At New Hinksey CE first school, Oxford (Julie St Clair Hoare, working with parents and the community in the south-east), the prize money will set up a breakfast club. On the other hand, at St Martin’s CE infants’ school in Salisbury, “new chairs and tables for the hall” top the list.

But St Martin’s is a special case. Josie Adlard, the school’s learning support assistant, went on to win the national title, so the pound;2,000 became pound;15,000. Now the priorities have been re-ordered. “A third of it is going on furniture,” says headteacher Jane Talbot, “a third on playground structures, and a third on something special, like a poet or a writer working with us for a while. And there’s enough left over to pay for the big party we gave for the children and their parents, to celebrate Josie’s big day.”

Parties and poets figure in other schools, too. In addition to library books, Carnforth high school wants to spend pound;1,000 on “something inspirational, something pupils will remember for a long time - novelists, playwrights, poets or reporters brought in to do workshops with them”. At Barrow primary school in Clitheroe, head Christopher Wood, who won the primary school leadership award for the north-west, took the whole school to the Camelot theme park “on a glorious summer day. We had a great day out. And with the rest of the money I bought a group membership of a local leisure centre for all the staff and school helpers to enjoy.”

He isn’t alone in deciding that teacher morale is a priority. Chalvedon school and sixth-form centre in Basildon, Essex, with winners in 1999 and 2000 - as well as Barbara Blaney’s national award last year for special educational needs (see feature, page 8) - has a veritable nest egg of prize money. Some of it, says head Alan Roach, has been spent in raising the profile of SEN teaching across the school, but the rest is to go towards a staffroom complex.

“It will provide facilities for all the teaching and non-teaching staff who make this school what it is: catering facilities, ICT and meeting rooms, adequate toilets; at last, an adequate space for relaxing as well as working. What is more important than this? Staff do so much, and are so often taken for granted.”

Chalvedon’s is not the only building project. Last year’s national school leadership title awarded to Sue Hyland, head of Houghton Kepier school in County Durham, is a real morale-booster as the school emerges from serious weakness. The pound;15,000 prize, doubled by a generous local sponsor, has taken Houghton Kepier to the point where it can bid for sports college status. That, backed by Excellence in Cities and social deprivation funding, opens the way in turn for a lottery application that could produce, for school and community use, the kind of sports and fitness provision most towns can only dream of. “Teaching awards recognition has unlocked an almost unbelievable opportunity,” says Ms Hyland.

Other projects reflect the passions of the teachers who won the funding. Alastair Coupar, who last year won Bushey Meads school’s second regional title for his unique contribution as a classroom assistant, works primarily with disabled pupils, some of whom have multiple disabilities. His delight (and theirs) has been to teach them wheelchair football - so the school has bought special chairs for travelling and a full team kit, and arranged a match with a visiting Japanese team.

David Bennett, who was head of humanities at Leicester’s Babington community technology college (he’s now co-ordinator of teaching and learning), has long dreamed of setting up a peace garden. His national secondary teacher of the year award has given the college the means to bring it about. It will be a place, says his head, Judith Smith, where the students of this busy, multi-ethnic city can find a few moments of quiet and reflection. “It’s partly a memorial garden,” says David Bennett, “and partly a refuge; a place to lift your spirits. It will be something for the whole school community to value and enjoy.”

They have done their research and they have chosen the site, a small, enclosed courtyard. Now they are thinking about the planting and the upkeep. “We’re looking for a specialist designer because it’s got to be right, and it’s got to be sustainable,” says Mr Bennett. “We want it to last.” Quietly, they are hoping they can persuade BBC’s Ground Force team to take it on.

In a rather different context, Massereene community college in Antrim, Northern Ireland, produced a similar idea. Gary Trew, who received last year’s regional award for work with parents and the community, wrote to the Teaching Awards Trust late last year to explain it: “Much of our focus is on working with those less fortunate than ourselves. We had planned to build a sensory garden at Riverside school for handicapped children, and to develop the rather spartan ‘peace path’ that we have built between our school (which is Protestant) and the Catholic St Malachy’s. I am delighted to say the money that goes with the Plato award has given this project the green light.”

Mr Trew wrote that letter at a time when, as he said, the world was aghast at images of Catholic children being abused as they tried to get to their primary school, Holy Cross, in Belfast. “It is a reminder,” he wrote, “of the full extent of the work that lies ahead. But we will use your money wisely to help to make our garden, which will perhaps play some part in improving community relations in Northern Ireland.”

Still ambivalent about the Teaching Awards? There is probably someone at your school whose work merits an award. Nominations close at the end of February. Find details and forms at www.teachingawards.com. A new category, the BP Award for Science Year, has been introduced for 2002