Post by Terri-Leigh Riley

I'm a day late for Social Mobility Day, but this is me at my primary school in Jarrow, Tyne and Wear. For secondary, I attended one of the poorest performing comprehensive schools in the North East, which I joined during a controversial merger of two deprived schools. The second photo shows the protests that preceded the merger; the other school responded with rioting. The merger went ahead, which lead to declining behaviour and rising violence. I saw fights, fires, a firework set off in the schoolyard. This caused a spiral of teachers leaving or going on long-term sick, which in turn worsened behaviour problems. At it's worst, around half of my school lessons were staffed by supply teachers. Cover lessons involved wordsearches at best, and total carnage at worst. When I wasn't bored, I was scared. At Sixth Form, I applied to University of Cambridge 'as a joke' and got in. It was more of a dream than a joke. Despite not having gained a single A* at GCSE, I left Cambridge with a first class degree, proof that context matters. After graduation, I worked in outreach, touring disadvantaged schools and delivering Cambridge outreach talks on behalf of Trinity College Cambridge. Then I trained to teach English through Teach First. It was the best job in the world. When I had to set cover for my training days, I was told: - Don't set anything important, you won't know if it's been taught properly - Don't set anything requiring subject knowledge, you don't know who is covering So what could I set? Filler work? Those wordsearches started to make sense. That's when I first had the idea of inviting one of my Cambridge outreach colleagues to speak to my students in place of cover. It never materialised, but the idea stuck. We schedule enrichment visits in place of timetabled lessons, but accept cover as inevitable deadtime: merging the two could save thousands of hours of learning, and increase access to enrichment. That's why I've founded UpCover, my new social enterprise aimed at improving secondary school cover lessons through universal retrieval lessons and enrichment provision. I want covering teachers to be fully prepared with outstanding, fully-resourced lessons on topics that they are knowledgeable about, and for ill teachers to stay in bed rather than scrambling to create cover work. I want us to see teacher absence as an opportunity rather than a compromise. But more than that, I want disadvantaged students to feel valued, rather than abandoned, when their teacher is absent. #MadeInStateSchool The 93% Club