My personal Mission Statement: to inform and empower parents so that they can better understand and take control of their child’s education.

I am a teacher with nearly 30 years of experience, having completed my PGCE with the Open University in 1997. After initially training as a Primary School Teacher, I later went on to work in Adult and Further Education (teaching Basic and Functional Skills) and working as a Secondary School Maths Teacher. My final post was as SENCo in a large Secondary School in Cambridgeshire.

After leaving my school teaching career in 2015, I went on to set up and run two successful Kip McGrath Centres in Peterborough specialising in tutoring Maths, English, Science and 11+. The Tuition Centres also function as an Alternative Provision during the day, working with local Secondary Schools and Peterborough City Council. My Centres have always been very welcoming and supportive to children with a diverse range of learning needs and families who are home educating.

I am also a mum of 3 and nanny of 1. My children are now fully grown and established adults with their own jobs, homes and families. However, the task of getting them to this point (alongside being a full-time teacher) has taught me a lot about how the education system works, how it can fail, and making me wish that I had made different choices when my own children were young.

There are two very personal experiences with my own family that make me connect emotionally with many parents that I work with. Both of these involved transitioning a child into Secondary School. On two occasions this resulted in severe emotional trauma responses from my child, extreme ‘out of character’ behaviour at home, bullying by other pupils and lack of support or understanding from the school. 

I hear these same stories repeated over and over again; different children, different schools, but the same emotional harm . Often, what makes this worse, is the complete lack of understanding from the school and the laying of ‘blame’ on you as a parent. 

My parenting skills were put under the microscope again and again as the school looked to ‘deflect’ the issues back onto home. Luckily, on one occasion, we came across a lovely supportive psychologist and family therapist who advised the school that we were not the issue. On the second occasion, I pulled the child out of school and home educated. She went back to school purely to get her through GCSE exams, but it was a tough call (we both cried).

Therefore, I fully support any family who is going through school based trauma. Some parents and families may decide to home educate, some may not. All of us have different circumstances to deal with, none of us should be judging others.