Despite her modesty, Kate Campion-Smith is clearly a winner. The 25-year-old science graduate, who was recently named best new teacher in London and the South East at the Teaching Awards, is now favourite to win the nationwide prize at the end of October. But she’s not just a poster girl for good teaching. Campion-Smith represents something new in the education world: she came to the profession via the education charity Teach First.
In 2002 Brett Wigdortz, an American working in London for the management consultancy McKinsey & Company, was looking at how business could help education. He was struck, he says, by the idea that disadvantaged children might benefit from top graduates being placed in their schools.
“I was told that my plan would never