UK Teacher To Find A Niche

MAKING a sea change or "desert change" doesn ’t get more drastic than moving from rainy Britain to the rustred dirt of outback Australia and the Central Desert community of Warburton.

But one holiday to Australia was all it took and British school principal Steven Soames was hooked.

"I was in the UK where I was working as a deputy principal," he said "I was looking for a bit of a sea change and I came over here on holiday.

"I really enjoyed it and went to the Education Department and found out what the position was on teachers and at the time there was a massive teacher shortage so I was ahnost nailed to the seat.

"I filled in the form and when I got back to the UK, I got a phone call at 5.30 one morning telling me I ’d been accepted to the remote teaching service." only having been in Western Australia for three and a half years, Mr Soames has spent his entire Australian teaching career working in regional WA.

Before relocating to Warburton to work as the school principal at the Warburton Ranges Remote Community School, he worked in Laverton where he spent one year as a teacher and two years as a deputy principal.

"I really got taken with the idea of teaching in the remote areas," he said.

"I feel that some of the remote schools, very often, are at a disadvantage and I ’ve always enjoyed working alongside communities that experience disadvantage and try and make a difference." "I came out to Warburton last year and I really enjoyed it I think it ’s a lovely place." While he may be a long way from home and his background teaching in inner-city schools in England, Mr Soames said the disparity in education between the UK and remote Western Australia is not that huge despite the massive differences in culture and geography.

"There are a lot of similarities but there are also a lot of differences," he said.

"Culturally there are a lot of differences because the UK culture is relatively homogenous whereas here, some of the teaching strategies we try to adapt to meet the needs of the students.

"But having said that, teaching is teaching wherever you are and I am a big believer that good teaching is good teaching wherever you find yourself - "What I have noticed in terms of similarities is that poverty is still poverty the issues that it generates are still the same."

Kalgorlie Miner
Australia