Award: Learning support assistant of the year, South-east region.

Citation: “Works endlessly to give physically impaired students as full an academic and social life as their able-bodied peersI A skilled listener, patient and understandingI Accompanies them on outings, and helps with all their physical needs.”

Background: Was a house-husband, caring for his children. Saw the advertisement for his present job five years ago, applied, and has never regretted it. No experience or training - “though I’d been a publican, which probably helps. But I wouldn’t change it, even though I need a second job in the evenings to make ends meet. It’s the students who keep me here: I get so much from them.”

Best moments?: “Managing to communicate with youngsters who have neither movement nor speech. Helping them to see places they would never otherwise see, do things they would never otherwise do. Breaking the rules for them, like the time I carried Shaz, who has cerebral palsy, down 80 steps to the beach at Durdle Door in Dorset, so he could do his GCSE fieldwork. And carried him up again! And playing wheelchair football with them. Things that none of us will ever forget.”

Any regrets?: “No - just a few ‘if onlys’. If only more people could find time to talk with these youngsters. One of them is totally paralysed and communicates by pointing with his eyes, a letter at a time, on a board. It means so much to him to talk like that - so much to all of us.”

And if you win the national title?: “I’d want to share it with our special needs co-ordinator and the manager of learning support. But I’d really like to take the wheelchair footballers on tour. That would be really something.”

MICHAEL DUFFY

The national finals of the Teaching Awards will be held in London on October 28, and broadcast on BBC1 on November 4.www.teachingawards.com