Meet Francis Wright

Francis works as a Level 3 Teaching Assistant with a PE, Health and Wellbeing focus at Hare Street Community Primary School and Nursery, a two-form mainstream primary school in Essex. Francis was hired as a PE apprentice and works full-time in the role as a trained PE professional who supports PE sessions five days a week.

Francis is a two-times national boxing champion, and winner of six regional titles. She recognised early on that she could combine her love of sport with her work as a teaching apprentice and one of the initiatives she has rolled out is an after-school boxing club.

Below she tells us about why she loves her job and the benefits of apprenticeship training, the importance of enrichment clubs and why we need to get girls involved in sport as early as possible.

“I think because I work full time and specialise in PE I’ve been able to help boost PE provision here and expand what we have on offer.

Before I joined it was only logistically possible for our PE teacher to cover sessions three times a week, but now that I’m here the kids get the benefit of someone who is passionate about sports and is a trained sports specialist five days a week. I can help with things like taking them to fixtures and have started an after-school boxing club.”

“Growing up, I had a brother with special needs, so I always worked around his schedule and understood that world. In secondary school, I knew I didn’t want to go into standard education, but I was interested in childcare. I’ve always had a real passion for helping special needs kids, and supporting charities that work with them. I think that actually I do want to make a difference, because a lot of them just aren’t understood.”

I support the PE teacher to deliver the national curriculum and when they are not around. On Fridays, the kids go out to fixtures that are arranged by the Schools Sports Partnership. All the Harlow schools come together and we do a different sports competition, basketball, football, dodge ball, swimming galas each week. We also offer cross-country training. I lead some of the after-school enrichment clubs and I also help out when needed, in the classroom.”

I think sport in general is just really important for kids nowadays because when they’re at home, they’re sitting on laptops, computer games, they’re not going out running around with their friends anymore. Having some time in the day to get moving is so good for your mental health whether you’re a child or an adult – and it helps you return ready to learn.

We have some pupils with special educational needs who struggle to focus on their work, but when they come out here to do PE in the playground everything changes. There’s one pupil in particular who is really focused when he’s doing PE and wants to achieve everything that the other children are doing. I can help him see that he can achieve at school and I hope that will inspire him with his classroom work as well.“

Our after-school clubs are another really important way to help build children’s self-esteem, resilience and discipline by having something to focus on . My school is in a relatively deprived area – we have a lot of kids on free school meals. I think they all need an opportunity to be able to go and do something because a lot of the parents don’t have the money to take them to clubs outside of school. They might never get the chance to experience it again.

It’s going really well and a lot of the kids absolutely love it! Some come and have a go, decide it’s not for them, but lots keep coming back. It was my Headteacher’s idea to start with the girls actually, and he bought them all boxing gloves. I totally supported this because the boys are football mad, but the girls don’t really have anything that they’re that focused on sports-wise.

Boxing is not for everyone, but what we want is for girls to get used to trying new sports. Our children are at the age where this is still possible.

Getting them started from a younger age is nice because they are more likely to stick with it as they get older. I started boxing quite late and had to step into a male-dominated environment. There were other girls on the competitive circuit who were boxing of course, but many of them had parents who had coached them, they’d all been doing it from a much younger age. I had to work hard to catch up. When you are a teenage girl you can feel more self-conscious about trying new sports, so it’s important to give girls opportunities to try things as early as possible.

I think it’s important for the boys and the girls to have someone to look up to, so they can see there’s both men and women achieving in sport, it’s a real positive for them to have that.

Who knows, if the girls in the after-school club like it, then they might come up to my boxing club when they are old enough – that would be incredible.”

Discipline and respect are massively important in boxing. It’s obviously great for physical coordination, focusing energy, and following instructions, particularly for younger kids, but developing the right mindset is also a big thing.

If you stick with the sport as you get older and maybe join a club, this develops even more. For me personally it’s about putting disagreements to one side and refocusing on the goal ahead. It’s happened quite a lot, you have a fight, you think you’ve won, the judges see it the other way. But you can’t let that get you down. You’ve just got to keep training.

I don’t think you can get any kind of training for a career in education where you’re going to learn as much as actually being in a school. But the apprenticeship is great as you are also doing your online work and research that you can directly apply in real life.

It’s so much better than just sitting at a computer screen or lecture theatre, because you’re actually getting that on the job experience and continuous feedback from your school mentor and ESF tutor. 

I’ve really enjoyed learning about the national curriculum and some of the theory, for example about positive behaviour management, has been really handy, but the practical central training days have been the best. My tutor, Henry, has also been amazing and provide support throughout.

I started my apprenticeship because I wanted to be actively involved in sport, start my career and make a difference in children’s lives right away – it’s definitely given me that opportunity.