Our Story

It was back in July 2013 it happened; I was driving home pondering over the day. I had been researching how we learn at Exeter University and scanning people’s brains whilst they did a small learning task. The biology of the brain was supposed to explain exactly what was happening in learning, but I knew there was something else going on besides biology. I’d never been able to understand in all my 20 years of working in and investigating learning, why people have such a fixed view of how they will do in a test or an academic task; whether they will be any good or if they will embarrass themselves. I found more people were afraid of the actual academic test than being inside an MRI scanner for an hour.

Some people wanted to justify why they wouldn’t or might not do well, others wanted to see if the results were ranked and where would they be in that rank. It didn’t surprise me at all. I had heard those fears for years.

Was it just how people thought of themselves, did it really matter? However, years of teaching children and adults has shown me it does matter. In my former years training healthcare professionals, I’d witnessed highly skilled adults crumble and panic over the announcement of a test or producing a report, never any different than the 10-year-olds I had worked with who were terrified of tests or producing something written. I knew those fears affected what they could mentally do.

If it was just people’s thoughts that affected their academic performance, couldn’t we just train them to think differently? As soon as I asked that question, I knew it wasn’t possible. My first postgraduate studies in clinical psychology illuminated how we are more than just our thoughts. Interventions designed to change a person’s thinking and behaviour were being shown to have very poor long-term effects. Also, my specialism of working with children who have dyslexia has proven repeatedly that it takes a considerable amount of skill and knowledge of cognitive processes to teach these children and adults. I knew that ‘positive thinking’ type coaching with children with dyslexia or processing problems, was as useful and as painful as telling a child with broken legs they can walk if they believed in themselves enough. When I graduated, I gave seminars to new clinical psychology students to raise awareness of the emotional impact of dyslexia when they are working with clients, specifically the powerlessness and helplessness they may have suffered as a child in the hands of untrained and unskilled educators.

All my research, training and experience constantly showed me that what affected a person’s ability to learn and perform was the quality of the instruction and tutoring that a child was receiving, and how that child thought and believed in themselves. Both the cognitive learning and emotional lives were equally important, although it was never crystal clear how. Until that evening in July, when driving home, I turned on my new audiobook ‘Mastery’ by Graham Greene.

The book covered a vast array of learning research exploring the concept of Mastery. Mastery is when you are so skilled at something, it becomes a part of you and you are as proficient as you can ever be. The great achievers such as Darwin, Mozart and Henry-Ford were all used as examples. The key part for me was about repeated practise. How by practising for 10 years or by 10,000 hours of practise a person can ‘Master’ a subject to the highest skill level possible. It was also argued that people with dyslexia have a quicker route to mastery, as seen in the field of music, business arts, creative writing and many more fields.

As I listened on the drive home, everything connected for me. I realised that as we all know, when children are at school they are learning academically. However, by comparing themselves to others or putting performance pressure on themselves, they are also learning something else at the same time. They are learning their academic self-worth. On average, by the time a child finishes primary school 6,840 hours of learning have taken place. Well on the way to achieving mastery level with their academic self-worth. Then on average by the time a child finishes their GCSE’s 12,540 hours of class-based learning has taken place. I finally understood why this academic self-worth could become so fixed and continue through adulthood. If a child is teaching themselves, they are not clever, not bright, not good enough and will never achieve at their education or any ‘academic work’, by the time they leave school they are ‘Mastering’ that line of thinking. It then drives their behaviours and future decisions. This is what they carry into their adult lives. I realised it was this academic self-worth that governed how receptive the child would be to learning from their class teachers, new things in general, revising for exams and fulfilling their potential.

So, from that day Westcountry SEN was born. A tuition company that hand selects and trains skilled SEN tutors who are not only highly skilled with advanced tutoring practices, but who are also tuned in to the child’s self-narrative and can challenge any learnt self-destructive academic thoughts and fears as they arise. We also specialise in dyslexia maths tuition and are qualified spelling tutors.

Not a day goes by in which I’m not proud of every student who has come through Westcountry’s SEN’s doors and what they have all achieved. We have hundreds of success stories and continue to improve children’s academic lives which become the foundations for confident adults who can rely on their ability to learn.

I welcome you to get in touch and see if we can help your child write their learning story as one of confidence and achievement that they can carry with them into their adult lives thanks to SEN tuition in Dorset. We really do offer lessons for life.

Pippa Bealing

Director, Westcountry SEN.