Dion Jones’s penchant for loud shirts and clashing ties makes him difficult to miss at George Farmer secondary school in Holbeach, Lincolnshire. But the pupils and teachers will have to stomach their newest design and technology teacher’s dress sense for some time, as he has just successfully completed his NQT year there and accepted a permanent post.

“I’ve really found my niche,” says the 36-year-old. But it took a while. He was a welder for almost 20 years, working in his native Grantham, London and, for a while, Australia.

“I left school with one CSE and one O-level. I went to a grammar school because I scraped through my 11-plus. But I shouldn’t have been there. I had a friend who went to the comprehensive and we used to say he was the cream of the crap and I was the crap of the cream.”

After leaving school with little confidence, he felt his only option was to do a City and Guilds in engineering, a popular choice in an area where, in those days, manufacturing was still a major employer. By his early twenties, Mr Jones had completed his ordinary national certificate and an HNC and looked set to become the foreman in a welding plant. His confidence had grown but he says he was still quite withdrawn.

And all the while he hankered after a life in Australia. Just before his 26th birthday - the cut-off age for temporary work visas to the country - he and a friend took off for the other side of the planet. “We had always talked about going, and suddenly we did,” he says. His first job was as a door-to-door salesman selling credit cards. “I wasn’t any good at it, but it was fun.”

He then travelled round the country, selling his skills as a welder to fund his wanderings. The trip did wonders for his confidence, and he returned to Britain determined to move on. So he signed up for a degree in industrial studies at the former Nottingham Trent Poly, with the aim of moving into engineering management. He graduated in 1995, but found getting a job difficult. “I was too old and yet too inexperienced. I finally had to accept a job back on the shop floor,” he says. “It was very frustrating and I felt very dejected.”

He then had to work his way up, finally moving into a position where he spent half his time on the shop floor and the other half in the office.

All along, he had been heavily involved in the Rotaract Club, a younger version of the Rotary Club, which meant he had to give speeches and run meetings. “It really developed my communication skills - I need them for this job - and my organisational skills.” Then in 1991 he joined the Kesteven rugby club, where he began to coach youngsters. “I was still looking for something different to do when I met some teachers at the club. I talked to them about the profession - it sounded interesting. Then one of my friends decided to train and suggested I did as well.”

It was just the push Mr Jones needed. He returned to Nottingham and did his PGCE. “I was apprehensive on my first day in a school. I was so scared, but I really enjoyed it,” he says. He felt he had found what he had been looking for all his working life. “It’s just so satisfying. I did enjoy welding, when I had completed a job and done it well. But it was nothing like this. I get on great with the kids and I’m at a good school.”

He says he can also talk to the pupils from a level they appreciate and can warn them of the dangers of failure to make any effort. “I’m a living example of what they might end up doing,” he says.