085 - Elaine Mackechnie - Classroom to Maths Tutor & Course Creator

This week, Sharon and Sarah sit down with the brilliant Elaine Mackechnie, known to many as Maths with Mrs Mack - a tutor whose journey out of the classroom has inspired hundreds of teachers to rethink what’s possible.

After 26 years in education, spanning roles from Joint Head of MFL to Head of Year, Head of Key Stage and eventually 2nd in Maths, Elaine found herself pushed, pulled and reshaped by a system that never quite knew what to do with someone who could teach anything. What followed is a story of reinvention, grit, humour and the moment she realised she didn’t need permission to build the career she truly wanted.

In this episode, Elaine shares how she went from languages to maths, from burnout to business owner, and now helps non-specialist teachers become confident GCSE maths tutors through her growing platform:

 👉 Maths with Mrs Mack – https://info.mathswithmrsmack.co.uk/home-348504

It’s honest, uplifting and a reminder that the skills teachers carry run far deeper than a job title.

Happy birthday, Elaine - and thank you for celebrating it with us in true Pit Pony style.

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Edited with finesse by our Podcast Super Producer, Mike Roberts of Making Digital Real

Transcript

Hello, hello, hello, hello and welcome to another episode of the Pit Pony Podcast. We have a wonderful woman here with us today. She's no stranger to myself and Sarah, it's Elaine Mackechnie. 

We've known her for many and many years in the world of tutoring and Elaine's a little bit different when it comes to the world of tutoring and one of the reasons we've asked her on here today is because I think she could start to burst some blind spots, pop some myths when it comes to teachers who leave the classroom and go into tutoring. I think you're going to find this a really, really fascinating episode. And Elaine's story is also fascinating. 

She started in the classroom 22 years ago. Now, she actually wanted to be a primary school teacher but loved modern foreign languages and knew if she went into the world of primary, she would never get to teach modern foreign languages. So, that was the first of her many sacrifices that she made along the way on behalf of her love of modern foreign languages. 

Nobody's going to tell her story better than Elaine herself. So, no longer in the classroom, the absolute pit pony who was born to teach. Elaine Mackechnie, what is it you're doing today? I am now a fully booked GCSE maths tutor and I also help non-specialist teachers like me upskill to become confident GCSE maths tutors by delivering courses.

Wow, Elaine Mackechnie, how can you possibly be touching on the topic that I spend hours and hours talking to? You can only tutor if you're English, maths, science or primary. I teach PE. I teach art. 

I can't be a tutor. Oh, yes, you can and we will come on to that shortly. But before we do, Elaine, teaching was your life. 

Modern foreign languages was your life. Start wherever you feel most comfortable and walk us through the in and then the exit of your life in the classroom. Thank you. 

Well, I always was going to be a teacher. I didn't really ever think that I was going to do anything else. And like you said, I just thought I'd be in primary because I always loved working with little ones and my work experience was in a primary school. 

But I also developed a love of modern foreign languages, specifically French and German, and I really wanted to teach those. And so I had to make a decision. And at the time, languages weren't even taught in primary school. 

And when they eventually were, it really wasn't anything very meaningful, unfortunately. So I went into secondary school teaching instead and teaching languages. And it was all a very automatic path for me. 

It was never anything different. I did my GCSEs, I did my A-level, I went to university and did my degree in French and German, and then I went and did my PGCE, and then I went straight into a job. So it was all automatic, following a series of steps, boom, in. 

And I met on my very first day as an NQT, I met a girl, a woman that was going to become a really good friend of mine. We were joint NQTs together. We went through all those highs and lows of the first couple of years teaching together. 

And we were a bit of a power team, really. We became great mates, but we were also really both very, very good at our jobs, both had very different skill sets. We complemented each other really, really well. 

So within two years, we were both promoted jointly to head a department, find ourselves running a department. And it was just going really, really well. And then I had a bit of a life shift personally, and I ended up suddenly facing the possibility of facing the fact that I was going to be a single mum.

And at the same time as that happened, my good friend got a job in another school as a head of department in her own right. And I didn't know if I could face being a head of department on my own as at the same time being a single mum. So I left that job and I took another job.

But what happened was I went into another job and I very quickly found myself facing redundancy because it was around the time that languages were being just squeezed out of the curriculum in the early 2000s. So I was finding myself as a single mum with a mortgage and no job. So I went back to a previous school and I said, the school that I'd left, do you have anything for me? And my lovely friend who was a deputy head teacher said to me, yeah, we have got something, Elaine, but it's maths. 

And I said, absolutely no way. I got a C at GCSE, Steve. There's no way I can teach maths. 

And he said to me, Elaine, we know you can teach and you can learn the maths. And that sentence has just remained with me forever. Oh, I think when you told me that sentence, I thought, and let that be the absolute attitude that teachers should have about themselves. 

You can teach. You can pretty much do it. I loved that line. 

And I really hope that head of department is still with us or is still able to listen to Jesus. Still a good mate. He's still cheering me on.

Brilliant. So let me just, what did he say again? He said, we know, Elaine, we know you can teach and you can learn the maths, that exact sentence, because I've never forgotten it. Beautiful. 

So you take the leap of faith. Obviously, you know you're in very safe hands because you can just get a feel for a person, can't you, in that respect. So is that what they did? Did they teach you the maths? So, well, I taught myself the maths, actually, because I started off in key stage three and foundation GCSE. 

So, and I was always making sure I was a good step ahead of the kids. And if I got stuck, I had a head of department and a team around me to ask for help. And they were brilliant. 

And I just made sure I was well planned, which as teachers, we generally, we are, aren't we? And, you know, if we need to plan, we'll plan. And I found that I really loved it. I was really, really enjoying myself.

I was doing two days a week. I had a little baby. Life was good, but that was actually only a temporary contract and that ended. 

And so, oh, okay. Right. Here we go again.

So I went back into languages, actually with my best friend, the one that had gone off and got her head of department job. She needed a teacher. She wanted me because she, you know, I was a safe bet. 

So I went and worked with her in languages, got a permanent post. Thank goodness. Right.

I mean, I'm safe again, two years down the line, redundancy again. Wow. Second time.

Because I didn't ever have a TLR at that time. I was the first one to go. You were always at the top of the criteria, the bottom of the criteria, basically. 

Oh my God. And the only way that I could stay in the school was if I was willing to take on another subject. And of course, as most schools they had a shortage of maths teachers. 

So would you teach a maths? Yeah. Okay. I'll teach the maths. 

I've done it before. I quite enjoyed it. Yeah. 

I'll teach some more maths. So I started again with another absolutely brilliant head of department. And I was teaching, at one point, I was teaching French, German, Spanish, and maths. 

Four different classrooms, within and around the school, but I loved it. Wow. And that was all going well. 

And I ended up being put on various little courses, conversion courses. I think I did part of a master's course or something. I did all sorts of things and I was doing really well, but I was still teaching both. 

And then, unfortunately, that wonderful head of department got very, very ill and died. And it was just an awful, awful time for all of us at the school. And he was obviously replaced in time. 

And he was replaced with a woman who quickly made it very clear that she was not going to tolerate maths teachers who actually did not have maths degrees, which is just phenomenal, to be honest, because there's actually not many maths teachers that have got maths degrees, maths-related degrees, maybe, but not maths degrees. So I was told that I was not going to be able to teach maths. I was going to be shifted back into the languages department again. 

And I was thinking, I know what's going to come next. And about 12 months down the line, we know what's going to happen next. And I just thought, I'm not having this anymore. 

I'm not. I was so fed up with being pushed around and not having any kind of control over what I was doing. So I thought, right, I'm going to go off and get myself a different job. 

I'm going to leave this school and I'm going to go and see if I can actually go and land myself a proper maths job, a maths teaching contract. And I did. And that was 10 years ago when I got the first one I applied for in my local school. 

And I was pretty chuffed because I was up against new teachers. And as we both know, as we all know, that's quite something, isn't it, to build funds and everything. So I was pretty pleased. 

So then I thought, I've landed, maths job, no more languages. That's it. And I've not taught languages again since. 

And I was in the school where I'd grown up. It was in my local town. My daughter went to the school and I loved it. 

I felt like I remember having moments where I walked down the corridors and I thought, I can't believe I'm here. I can't believe I'm here. That is amazing. 

That's amazing to hear that. Yeah. And I'd already, by that point, so I'd started off in that very first school, just teaching key stage three and teaching foundation.

And over the years, I'd gone up a little bit higher. I'd got a lower and higher tier GCSE group. So like a set two, aiming for grades six and seven. 

So I was always improving my maths and slowly getting more and more experience with the higher ends. And when I got to this new school, my school I went to, I took on more and more higher GCSE and top sets lower down in the school. And eventually I got myself, I bagged myself a key stage four top set, top end GCSE. 

And I worked through with those kids and we had a brilliant relationship. And those kids came out with the best results a top set I'd seen in that school since the new GCSE came out. And I purely put it down to the fact that there's loads of good teachers, but I think what makes me different is that I am able to explain it in a way that they can understand that I've had all those struggles myself with it because it's not easy. 

You have to spend some time on it. Don't think for a minute, I don't just look at a topic, read a few textbooks. All right, that's it been gone away.

It's really hard. And I've had to go and ask for help and I've had to get, I've been there crying, telling myself, can't do this. There's no way I can teach maths. 

I cannot do this. I'm useless. I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to tell someone they're going to have to take this top set off me. 

But I didn't take a break. You push on through and I did it. And there's so much, there's so much to unpick there. 

And we will do that afterwards about what is the concept of a teacher and subject specialist. But I've just heard, I am walking through the corridors and I cannot believe. So I know there's something coming soon because she sat on the pit pony.

Yeah, I wouldn't be here, would I? Go on. Grace, Grace. I got, I actually got promoted to second in maths. 

It's just like, I couldn't believe it was happening with a year of being in that school. They'd made me full time and promoted me to second in department. It's just like, there was nothing holding me back. 

It was brilliant. My head of department, she was amazing. I learnt, she's a good mate still, learnt such a lot from her.

And it was brilliant. It was absolutely fantastic. But then things started to change.

First of all, we joined a trust. And it's okay though, Elaine, nothing's going to change. This whole running of the school is going to remain exactly as it is now. 

And the other thing that happened is that an assistant headteacher was promoted to deputy headteacher and started to take on because our headteacher moved on to do more in the trust. So this assistant headteacher moved up. He started to be in charge of more of the decision making. 

He was a science teacher, and he took on a couple of male teachers in their late thirties, early forties, who used to dress in navy suits and wear brown brogues. He took these on and they were just his golden boys. And I'd had a conversation with my headteacher about maybe me taking on the timetable. 

One of the jobs that my own head of department did was take on the timetable, do the timetable. And there was some talk of her retiring. So I had an informal chat with the head and said, you know, I wouldn't mind. 

I said, I'm not interested in being head of department, but I wouldn't mind having to go at that timetable. And he went, Oh, okay. He said, all right. 

Okay, well, we'll get you on some courses, Elaine. That'd be great. Yeah. 

We'll get you on some courses. And he said, but what do you mean you don't want to be head of department? You know, you'd be great head of department. We'd love to have you as head of department.

At which point I was like, Oh my God. Wow. They really rate me. 

They really think I'm really good. And I was so happy. And I was so grateful. 

And then these two chaps were appointed the head new head of science and the deputy head of science. And it was like, I didn't exist anymore. It was the first thing I heard was that the new head of science was going to be doing the timetable.

Wow. Just like that. No one ever even had a conversation with me. 

They didn't need to, they didn't owe me anything, but it would have been polite. And so then my head of department announces that she's going to retire, but I knew she was going to retire. So in the years leading up to her retirement, when I've been second in department, I had absolutely done everything I could. 

I had pushed myself forward. I had, I had done voluntary training, like training other, other staff. I had done, um, trips. 

I had done writing schemes of work. I'd gone way above and beyond what a second in department needs to do, because I was just desperate to prove myself desperate that when they wanted to have a new head of department, they would just look to me because I, they knew I could do it because I was all, I was about to be doing it. She was on the, she was retiring. 

She was really happy to support me and she wanted me to be her successor. Um, and I had a chat with the, with the head teacher when I was, um, when she'd announced she was going and he dropped the bombshell that he was going to advertise it nationally. Um, and he, and that was okay. 

Apart from the fact that they were cutting out the second in department, but they weren't cutting out the second in science department, second in science, that the, the chat, the report to second in science was going to get to keep his role as head of second in maths, second in English were going, second in science was remaining. And when I questioned why that was, I was told it was because science is such a big department and they've got lots of different subjects to manage. That's what I was told. 

Um, and then the head of science was predictably promoted and the second in science was automatically slotted into head of department role. So, but in maths, it was going to be advertised nationally. And when I queried that with my head teacher, he said, oh, it's because maths is such an important subject that we need to make sure we get the right person. 

So science is really important. Science is important enough for you to keep your second in science, but maths is important enough that you need to advertise nationally. So which one is really, really important? There is nothing nicer.

Then a man in a position of power who can word things any way they want suit their own agenda. It's crazy. Yeah. 

Yeah, it was. And I, and actually when I, when I said this to the head, probably didn't do myself any favours, but I said, you know, I've been in this school for six years and of all the internal promotions that have taken place, a female has never yet as, as yet to be appointed. That was the truth. 

And he looked at me and he said, well, I don't think that's the case. And I said, I think it is. There is. 

Didn't somebody on a recent podcast coined a phrase? I don't know whether Mike needs to bleep this out. Oh yeah. That's that. 

Yeah. That was what I heard the other day. That was, um, I can't remember it. 

Was it Lisa? Yeah. When she, when she was saying that last week, I was shouting at the radio. I was going, yeah, absolutely. 

Men in blue suits. Brown brogues. And RSLT was entirely male. 

And our middle leadership, I think there was nine people on the middle leadership and seven of them were male. It makes me realise that I actually, um, for most of my time as a senior leader, not towards the end, but for most of my time as a senior leader, I was on a team that was the, that almost sounds like it's booked the trend that it was predominantly female. Yes, male head, but it was predominantly female. 

Um, and I, I've no, I've not experienced that dynamic of very male dominated senior teams, but I've experienced the, the, the elsewhere, the domination of male, white, middle-class. Yeah. And, and it, and it, and it forms its own culture, doesn't it? They were all of that. 

They were all white. Yeah, it is. I think Elaine, that was because what Sarah described as her last experience in school was mine. 

It was all, um, all female, still, still toxic. Yeah. Don't get me wrong. 

Still toxic, but it was all female with the top with a token male. Do you think that shifted because of the, because Sarah and I have never really worked under the real multi-academy trust. This is your PowerPoint. 

This is, this is your logo. Do you think that is, well, it's certainly been your experience of the multi-academy trust. The CEO of the trust was a female and she was a rottweiler. 

Ruthless. Absolutely. Absolutely. 

I remember sitting in an interview for an assistant headship job at that school, which ironically, one of those two science blokes actually goes, I remember sitting in an interview with her and she asked me a question and I was, I was answering her question and I realised she was looking at the wall behind me. Like she was just bored. How to make someone feel really, really uncomfortable in an interview.

Yeah. So you can, you can see this, there's a pattern emerging. You've been, you've been told something and now you've been told another thing.

And it's not looking, can I just clarify this Elaine? You're going, there is a head of maths job that's been advertised nationally. You're second in maths and they're getting rid of second in maths. Yeah. 

And I went to the head and I said, I went to the head and I said, so I am really interested in being head of maths. And that's when he told me that they would have to advertise the job nationally. And I said, oh, oh, okay. 

And he said, obviously we welcome your application. And I went, okay, good. He said, but I do think you need to be aware Elaine that there will be other people out there with a stronger maths background and you need to be prepared that you might not get the job. 

So regardless of your track record in the school, regardless of the fact that everybody likes you, yeah. All the eight wheeler kids I dealt really popular with the kids. They hate your issues. 

They used to send people out from different subjects to my classroom to, you know, to manage behaviour. And I was just a second in department, but I was one of the ones that, oh, let's, let's go and sit them in Elaine's classroom because they'll be all right in there. So I didn't apply. 

So I said, I said, well, you've already decided that that's the way you feel that I'm not going to apply because why would I apply? Why would I put myself through that? If you've already decided that I'm not going to get it. Fair enough. Fair enough. 

You've got to take yourself away from the table. Somebody said to me, one of my good friends said to me, just because you'd be really good at a job doesn't mean to say you should do it. Just because you'd be good at a job doesn't mean to say it's right for you. 

But I was devastated because I put everything into that, into getting that for the last couple of years. So I didn't apply. They advertised nationally. 

They had five blokes turn up for interview and one of them got the job and he was absolutely useless. He couldn't make a decision. We got into, we were in week four of the September and he hadn't even decided on a scheme of work. 

Couldn't make a decision. Was asking us what we thought he should do. And that's when it gets offensive, doesn't it? Yeah. 

That you've been passed over. You've already, you've been pre-told that you are essentially going to be passed over. So you take a phenomenally brave decision to not even put yourself through it. 

But knowing full well that whoever gets the job, you are going to have to handhold them. Yes. And not to be paid for doing the job that you know having to do on somebody else's behalf. 

Been there, done that, got at least a t-shirt and it's frustrating. It's really frustrating. I had an operation at the same time and I've talked to you both about this a few weeks ago. 

But I had an operation and I was supposed to be having two weeks off work and I just absolutely hated going into work. But then I just felt, I just felt like I was totally invisible. The workload was ridiculous.

The workload was unmanageable and I had to have this operation. I was going to have a couple of weeks off work and I was so grateful. I was so grateful I was going to have this time off work.

And then I had the operation and there were some complications and I had to extend my time to a month off work. And I was just so pleased. I was just so, so pleased. 

It's just awful. And at the time it feels normal. The time you think everybody must feel like that about their job. 

And it's not until you come out of it later on that you think that's not a good way to feel that you want an operation to go slightly wrong so that you can have a bit of extra time away from your job. Well, I mean, I know we'll come on to talk about it shortly because I know our original Pit Pony video had a huge influence on you. But no, it isn't normal. 

It isn't right to, and here were some of the ones I remember very much from the time. A woman who used to get on the train to work in the morning and she just took a hand out and it broke her arm. She could have time off. 

It's the old tree. If I could just drive into the back of a pub, not enough to kill myself, but enough to stop what's going on. So we were talking to someone when we saw you and she'd had a family bereavement and she was almost grateful that her relative had done this for her so that she didn't have to go to work. 

A hundred percent. Just wrong. It, and then something really fortuitous happened. 

I broke my wrist so I couldn't drive it. It's like, oh my God. And I was thinking about this the other day. 

If you listen to that, I was listening to the language between Sarah and I, when we talk about what we do in a day, we never use the word work. I say, well, I can't because I'm tutoring until six o'clock. Sarah will say, well, I'm in the office. 

Yeah. Well, what time are you getting in the office or what time are you working? We never talk about a work. We never talk about it being a job.

We either talk about the location we are or what it is we're actually doing. Yeah. I'm in the office. 

I'm going to do some planning or I'm in the office. It's never referred to as work or a job because it isn't. In some respects, we are deeply blessed. 

But actually when we have been off on holiday or on leave, it can get quite, I want to get back now. Yeah. You're like raring to go when you come back. 

I often find I did need that break. I needed a bit of a reset because running a business is a whole different ballgame and there's a whole different load of stresses that come with it and brilliant challenges. So it's always nice to have a break. 

But yeah, you get back and I'm like, okay, let's get at it. But you found yourself having fortuitous complications. So at this point, is the new head of department in situ? No, that was actually a couple of years before. 

So that feeling of just being totally fed up at work was quite a bit before. But what also happened at the same time as this new head of department started or just before was, I know you always get parental complaints, don't you? But I had this awful situation where about three or four local parents had got together and all sent a virtually identical complaint about me. They'd obviously clearly written the email virtually together. 

But it was because their children were basically spoiled and I wasn't standing for it. So I was just putting them in detention and the parents were emailing me going, why has he got a behaviour point? He only did this. And I'm like, because he did that, because that's what he did. 

And I wasn't backing down. And it happened with a couple of different parents. In the end, they got this awful complaint about me and the fact that I was just dadded. 

As soon as I found out this woman was going, one of the phrases was, as soon as I found out this woman was going to be teaching my child, I got a private shooting, the irony. Because they were from my local town as well, that was that downside of living and working in the same place as people I saw in the street. That was the start, the end. 

That was a year before I finished. That was the beginning of the end. I went off and registered for a TEFL course to see if I could find a start to plan the way out. 

And that was one of the days that was just one of the hardest days to go into work the next day after that. And they'd gone straight to the deputy head. He'd pulled me into his office and tried to make it sound like he was on my side, but you could tell he wasn't. 

You could tell he'd fold like a cheap suit as soon as he got in front of those people. And how dare you enforce school bills? Discipline and expectations. So let me get this right in my mind. 

This has all been building. You're coming up to about the age of 40 at this point, are you Elaine? Where are you? No, I was a bit beyond 40 by then. I'd gone past, but I'd say I'd probably had a good five or six years of really starting to question whether this was what I wanted to do. 

And I'd had various moments where I'd been off with stress. I had a time when I was given a, I had a time at my previous school where they restructured the management and I was head of year at the time. And I ended up doing a job called achievement leader, which basically meant I was in charge of going from being in charge of year nine to being in charge of year nine, 10 and 11 for the same money and the same non-contact time. 

And that led me to have some time off work stress and step down from that role, sacrificing my TLR pay. I did that a couple of times actually. There'd been pockets of time where I was really starting to struggle.

Okay. So this is now really brewing. You know Phil, you are over the moon.

Yeah. You've got this complication. Yeah.

Tell me what happens during that period. So when I had the, when I was off ill, that was a couple of years before I finished. Two years before I finished it was, yes, it was a year, but that would have been about, that would have been around the same time that my head teacher had the conversation with me that there would, might be someone better out there at the department. 

And that was all carried on about the same time. So everything was really brewing. Then a year before I finished, so that would have been in summer 2021, they appointed this useless man as head of department. 

And I had that awful raft of parental complaints that was all around the same sort of time. So in the September, I thought, just tell me what I'm going to do. I'm just going to see if I can do a little bit of tutoring to see if I like it. 

So in that September, because I could just tell that I wasn't going to be able to sustain this for another, I was 45. I wasn't going to be able to do it for another, a bit older than 45 for another 15 years. So I took on a couple of kids tutoring after school and I found I quite enjoyed it, but I never thought I would be able to make a living out of it because I was charging about £25 an hour at the time for GCSE tuition, a bit of cash.

There's no way I can earn that sort of money in the after school hours and make a living, absolutely no way. And so I went through that year in school, just doing a bit more tutoring as much as I could possibly manage whilst trying to keep up with my school commitments as well. And in the Easter of that school year, I'll tell you what else had happened. 

There's so many little things as a neighbour had died, an elderly neighbour had died. And my daughter was very, very close to him. He used to come and see her and they were good mates. 

She used to walk the dog with him and stuff. And she wanted to go to his funeral and it was the first time she'd been to a funeral. And so I wanted to go with her. 

My funeral was on Monday morning and I was told I couldn't go because he wasn't a close relative. You could only give time off to go to a funeral if it was your mum, your sibling, your husband or your child. So in the end, I found myself having to arrange my own cover, literally having to go to all my colleagues, look who was free, go and ask them a favour. 

Will you cover my lesson? I'll do one for you next week. That's how it went. And I went and I went back to school. 

And I think this is ridiculous. This is absolutely ridiculous, this job. And then we broke up for Easter and I saw on Facebook that a friend of mine had packed in at my old school. 

She packed in and I messaged her and I said, wow, I'm so impressed with you. How have you done that? And she said, go and join this Facebook group. So I went and joined this. 

I went and joined this Facebook group and I found the pit pony video. Somebody must have was in the videos, wasn't it? Must have watched the pit pony video. And I was sat in a caravan in Wales in the rain watching this video with my husband. 

And I went, oh my God, these three women, they've made this whole living out of tutoring. This just might be possible. And I messaged Sharon and you sent me the long watch. 

Watched that as well. It was a good bit. It was raining that weekend. 

It was, and I watched them all and I worked out my bottom line and I thought about all the things I could do. And I went and wrote a CV and I applied to targeted provision to do some tuition for them. And at the end of that holiday, I handed in my notice two weeks after watching the video, I handed in my notice. 

Wow. Elaine, that is a phenomenal story. And I think when we, when we met up the other week, I think there was a, I was sat at a table with about six or seven other people and they went, yeah, we left because of the pit pony.

We left because of the pit pony. I think Sarah and I have been single-handedly responsible for the teaching exit crisis of 2020 to 25. But when you think about it, as you were talking, I could picture who you were in that school. 

I really could. And I've always felt I could picture who Sarah was and her reputation and that kind of thing. But what I tended to find was, because I've worked term when new head teachers have come in, but it wasn't necessarily this new version of multi-academy trusts. 

That's, that I have no experience of. But what I have got experience of is how who I think the very backbone of the school should be. They are the ones who are always considered the dinosaurs. 

They're not skilled enough. This is, I mean, Elaine Mackechnie, she's good, but she's not a maths specialist. She's good, but she's no experience as a head of department. 

She's good, but she wouldn't be able to run a department. She wouldn't be able to manage a department. And the same with, the same with Sarah, you know, she's a deputy. 

She's never been a head. She's a SENCO, but you know, only in a small school. It's like a fly getting swatted and you just basically need to remember your place. 

Yes, because you're not quite, you know, they're there, they mean well. And also if you are a woman of a certain age as well, you are getting to that certain age, you are becoming older generation and they have talent. Yeah. 

They are the absolute treasures in the school that can do all of these things, that can guide the new people who need to come in. And it's really, really sad because since the Pit Pony, since Life After Teaching, you don't have to put up with that anymore. You really, really don't have to be that woman or be that man, that dinosaur, that one who suddenly goes, the target was on my back. 

I am unhappy. I became unwell. And one of the things that we've always said was tutoring. 

Now, clearly what happens with you Elaine is you, you, you, you join up some very small dots along the way and go, I can teach maths. I am an experienced maths teacher. So very quickly, I know that your one-to-one sessions, your group sessions, they joined. 

And, and tutoring, setting yourself up as a solo tutor, there's enough information out there. There's enough people doing courses. There's, there's all sorts of stuff going on in the world of tutoring. 

It's wonderful. But what you did was something quite, quite unique. And I want to talk to you about what it is you actually do alongside your very hectic own tuition classes. 

You take people who, like yourself, are not maths specialists, and you work with them to skill them up to become maths tutors. Now, Sarah, you've been there. Your business studies, you've tutored English, science, maths, by being that two steps ahead of the kid kind of thing. 

So Elaine, how do you do that? I mean, I should imagine there's a mindset piece that needs to be done with these people. Yeah. And then there is the, so talk us a little bit about how Elaine Mackechnie takes a non-specialist to feel confident teaching maths. 

What do you do? Um, I just take them through my experience, really, because I did exactly what they're trying to do and everything that they're feeling now, I felt. And actually, I do still feel as well. And I'm not ashamed to admit that because I think it's part of what makes you a great tutor and teacher is that you can admit that you don't always find things really, really easy.

And actually, in a tutoring session, I think it's really, really powerful. And don't get me wrong, I'm very often, we need our students to look at us and feel confident in us. But every so often, there'll be a moment where I'll look at a question, I'll go, Oh, do you know what, I'm not sure actually how to do that one, but we'll solve it together. 

And you sit there and you work through it together. And they get to see my thought process as well and how I'm actually working inside for myself, what I'm doing. And that is exactly how I train the tutors. 

So they will come to me and if they want to work with me, we will put them on. I'll sort of talk them and help them decide which sort of level they're better off going in at. And I will guide them to the resources that they need to use to teach themselves the maths, but they've got me holding the hand alongside them, just like I have my heads of department and my colleagues in the department. 

And I will talk them through the topics. I will share the resources. That's a big thing with maths, if you can get the resources right, and if you know where to lay your hands on really good resources really, really quickly, it suddenly makes the job a whole lot easier because you can be tutoring a kid and you're doing a starter and you suddenly say, Oh, okay, they need a bit of help with expanding this bracket. 

I know exactly what website I'm going to go to. And that's the sort of thing I help the tutors with as well. But it's like you said, it's mindset. 

It's explaining to them, you are not going to start teaching this kid and know everything they're going to need to know, but you will get there together because you will build up slowly. You will learn things as you're going, you'll prepare a starter for them, and you'll have some idea of where the start is going to take you. But the more and more you do this, the best way to do it is to get in there and start. 

And they say to me, right, well, if I start your course, how long will it take me? How many years will it take me till I can start taking on a GCSE student? No, you start taking on a GCSE student now. You get a foundation student now because that way that you're throwing yourself in the deep end. That's what I did. 

I didn't get six months of getting paid to train myself up to tutor maths. I planned a lesson and within a week I was teaching a lesson. Yeah. 

It's one of those, in a similar way, I did this with Sarah. Do you ever remember that night at the Black Swan, Sarah, when I said I need you to teach GCSE English? Do you remember what happened then? Yeah, but I think there's a little bit of context before that because me and Elaine, Elaine and I, see I'm not an English teacher, have kind of a parallel experience because I took myself out of my core subject, which is business and IT, I took myself out of IT and volunteered to do science in school. And I kept myself three, four weeks ahead of the kids until after a couple of years I was teaching GCSE sets and then did similar with key stage three English, which was fine. 

And then when you took me to the Black Swan that night, honestly, it blew my mind because in an hour and a half with beer mats and a notebook, you gave me the abs and a glass of Coke, just for clarity. You gave me almost the absolute road map of what the fundamentals were that would run through the tuition. Everything else that sat around that was kind of gravy. 

It was a bit of prep work and all the rest of it. Where I would just probably, where my discomfort came and I said I would never do it was English literature because I do not know the texts well enough and I think that's a different thing completely. But you said something Elaine about your guy who said to you, we know you can teach, you can learn the maths. 

I think that is so critical and it's so critical when you go back to doing something that you haven't done for a long time. So, I've stepped back in this year to tutoring business studies at GCSE and A-level. I've not had the luxury of a six month run in to revise everything that I did at degree level. 

It's not really 25 years, no, but I've had six years break and it's making the brain hurt sometimes. Yeah, yeah. But a little bit of prep is enough because the teaching, the tutoring, the skills that sit around.

Yeah, and we're all in, you know, you don't get to be a teacher without having some kind of intelligence and ability to learn yourself. So, we pick it up, you know, if you're dedicated and motivated, you're going to pick it up really, really easily and you've got someone to go to if you need a little bit of help. You've got maybe, you know, I don't know, another maths tutor or in my case it was my head of department and my colleagues. 

But you can do it because actually you're teaching 15, 16-year-old kids. You are going to be able to keep ahead of them. You are going to be able to do it. 

It's not going to be beyond you. I think that's where I would come in now and if anybody's listening to this and going, I could do this. They've started to have something spark within them, okay, that maybe they, like you, they've been doing some, he staged three maths or they are a primary school tutor. 

Primary school teacher. Primary school teachers. Right, let's work out what I know because I do sit at the helm of a very large tuition business and I have got my ear to the ground and I can tell you now the demand for maths tutors in all the years I've been doing this has never waned. 

Not once. If you want to come out of the classroom, if you want to carve a niche for yourself in the world of tutoring, maths. One hundred and ten percent every day. 

And if you're a primary school teacher, you've already got a lot of, you've already got. Correct. Jane for the English as well.

The amount of primary school teachers I sit with and they go, I don't think I could do GCSE and I go, well, you know what you're doing in the SATs, that's actually harder. Sarah made a really, really good point, not literature, language. The English language, GCSE, I think is easier to deliver than the SATs. 

I really, really do. It is comprehension, four questions, write a short story, comprehension, four questions, write a newspaper article. Honestly, I know I've just dumbed down the entire, but the point I'm making here is, and this is the one, I don't want our listeners to conflate the idea of teaching and tutoring.

A teacher has that young person in a course subject probably for four, possibly five hours a week. They decide the delivery of the curriculum, what's delivered at what time of year. They decide the entry for some children and the exam board. 

You are acting as part of a, you are a cog in the whole of this mechanism. You are no longer responsible for that kid's GCSE results. It's the exam fields that become really important as well.

Correct. How I do it is, I tutor children with almost a laser sharp exam focus. This is what will get you eight marks. 

At this time of year with my year 11s, I have a mark scheme in front of me. Why is this six marks? Why is this eight marks? Now produce them. It's every single mark matters. 

So actually, I am working on the assumption that the school have already skilled the children up in certain ways and it's now making sure they apply it, or I identify the gap that the skill isn't there and then I tutor that skill. A tutor in maths and English at this stage in the year, GCSE, because it's turning on a six all the time. We'll do this, this, we are throwing in golden nuggets. 

We'll cover this, we'll cover that. Please do not labour under the impression that you are the sole person responsible for that kid, that you are going to have to deliver whole schemes of work. You will probably at best, just need to show a kid. 

Now I'm going to make this up because I don't know maths. No, I'll do it in English because I'll make myself look a fool if I start going down the road of thirds and all. If you literally say to that kid, see here, if you'd have just put a semi-colon in, now put some ellipsis, put those quote marks in, do you know I can? Oh, and it might simply, it's simple as that. 

There is a big difference. And I say it to the tutors I work with as well, because we spend a lot of time doing that and they get their minds blown. And I say, because I'm an examiner now as well. 

And so I say to them, if you just get your student to write this, and I say to them, if your student crosses this out and they replace it with something, fine. If they're not going to cross it out, if they're not going to replace it, sorry, then don't cross it out. And it's little nudges like that. 

They're like, oh, wow, really? And then I say, if they're going to write two different, oh, they can write two different methods. Don't let them write two different methods. If they write two different methods, the examiner is going to mark both and award the lowest marks.

And they're just like, their minds are blown. And I think, how much difference could you make to a giving them that sort of information? But then it works the other way as well, because if you give them that piece of information, so mine, that it always blows tutors' minds. And there's 160 marks on the GCSE English language paper and 32 of them, 32 of them is for spelling, punctuation and grammar. 

Nearly a quarter of a child's GCSE English language is on SPAG. And do you know what, primary school tutor? You are better at SPAG than me. You're secondary. 

So don't sit there shaking like a shitting dog that can't do GCSE when a quarter of the marks are in your wheelhouse anyway. So actually, if you just put yourself out there in the first instance until you've got your confidence going, delivering SPAG within a piece of fiction and non-fiction writing, because here's another thing, it's 40 marks out of 160 on your short story. So okay, primary school teacher, are you telling me you cannot give a child the skills necessary to write a big right, as it used to be called years ago, and secondly, teach SPAG? And the minute that blind spot is pierced, the minute they go, oh, I can do that. 

I can easily do that. But then what they have to fight with on a permanent basis is having to then not sit in front of that parent and child and apologise for their very existence, because they are not as... I'll let you know that what I'm going to do is I'm going to dumb down my 18 years experience as a primary school teacher. The fact I've been a SATS marker, the fact I could run rings around your average English teacher with what I know about SPAG, I'm going to apologise because I'm not a specialist. 

And I've only tutored a few kids. If you can work on that mindset, and I have always talked about it, know your worth. Know your worth. 

I, with enough prep, could teach anything. And the reason I could teach anything is because I'm charismatic and kids will listen to what I'm talking about. Whereas I could be a science specialist and children roll their eyes when I walk into the room because I'm dull as ditch water. 

I'm monotone and I don't get kids. So, I think this is about looking at the world of tutoring and the world of tutoring where it is now. There are so many alternatives to school that are popping up. 

And actually, if we step into the world of the alternative provision, and I mean that in its real broad sense of the word, actually, some parents don't want GCSE maths. They want functional maths for their kids, and then they want them off doing all, if they're elected, home education, right? There are some providers now who really want functional skills maths, not the GCSE. So, I think in many ways, one of the biggest blocks to a non-specialist going into the world of tutoring is themselves. 

I've always said there's nothing you can't teach yourself in business if you Google it. Nothing. It's all out there. 

You join good networks of people. You talk to people. They will give you their value. 

Like your head of maths did, everything that guy knew, you could have. And that's what we do in the tutoring community. We share good practise.

We support each other. There's all sorts of stuff going out there. Yeah, I thought it'd be really isolating when I joined, when I left. 

I thought, all on my own, I could not have been further from the truth. No, there's some really good conferences out there doing B&M raffles and all sorts. Yeah, yeah. 

All sorts of lemons and cleaning materials and that. All sorts of stuff going on. So, I think where you've been a really, really brilliant guest is you've talked about something that is a solution for many people out there who are looking to leave the classroom. 

And if we go back to the original Pit Pony, you don't then skill yourself up as a maths tutor and think you're going to leave the classroom in a sedan chair. You're doing other things as well. So, you might be working in the day delivering whatever you do, and you might even not be doing a teaching role in the day, but you're building up some GCSE maths.

Yeah, just to get started. Yeah. And don't teach beyond where you feel comfortable. 

Like you said, it was years before you got a top set GCSE. And actually... The biggest need is those grade fours. Yeah. 

Oh, by the way, and let me frame it for you like this, need a grade four, they wouldn't be coming to you if they'd really secured it. So, these kids are probably getting twos and threes in their marks. Well, that's year nine, year eight, that's really basic levels in maths. 

It's like when I get a kid who comes to me and his mum said, oh, he's getting a three at the moment, but we are hoping for a four or he's getting a two. The writing's illegible, they're not using full stops, they're not using capital letters. They're the kids you want around your desk because the wins are so quick.

The next time they do their mark, the mum goes, bloody hell, Sharon, it's smashed a four. Yeah, no, because I've taught him the tricks of what I needed to do in that. So, Elaine, you now find yourself, and we're very, very grateful that you joined us to record today because it has been a long weekend for you, has it not? That's been a very long weekend.

Thank you. Happy birthday to you. And with the happy birthday in mind, I would like to, I'd like to ask you to share with us your slide. 

The moment that you have had since leaving the classroom that you know you would never have had had you have stayed. So, to put this into context, I'm going to take you back 10 years to my 40th birthday when I had actually just been told that I was going to no longer be able to teach maths in my school, my previous school. So, I was facing the possibility of not being able to teach maths and going back into all that redundancy rubbish again. 

And at the same time, I was having one of my little pockets of time where I just cannot cope with the workload and the job and I had to have a short time off work. In the run up to my 40th birthday, I was off work. I was just a bit of a mess, really. 

I was totally fed up with being manoeuvred and manipulated into different jobs, you know, just having no control at all over what I was doing. And this weekend, I am celebrating my 50th birthday and I am tutoring maths GCSE on my own terms. I'm making my own decisions about what I want to do and what I don't want to do. 

No one tells me what I can and can't do anymore. I am even helping other tutors deliver GCSE maths tuition. So, I'm using my experiences and my skills as someone who changed and as a GCSE examiner to maybe make a bit of difference to some of our other pit ponies who feel like they haven't got enough to offer a family. 

So, I'm doing that and I'm doing that without batting an eyelid. I'm suddenly in a room with 20 peers, which was always the scariest thing for me to do. And I'm just doing it and I'm just getting on and I'm absolutely loving it. 

So, hello 50. Perfect. It's the unapologetic decade, I think your 50th is. 

It really, really is. We are loving our 50s. I will tell you that now.

And Elaine, it's been brilliant. It's been a really, really good episode because it's been amazing. It has gone fast and it was very brave of you to do this because you were like, oh, I don't know, I don't know. 

No, I was a bit afraid when you said you're going to do it. I'm going to do it in two days time. Of course, we're going to do it. 

And then ironically, we all got our makeup on on Friday morning, didn't we, Scott? Yes. And Sarah, what happened? Well, it's funny, isn't it? Cloudflare goes down. I try and log on to Streamyard. 

I'm getting an error. Sharon says she's getting the same error. Then Elaine does. 

And then the irony is Elaine's bit of Elaine going and checking an online service, whether things are down, down detector and down detector is run by Cloudflare. So, that's neat. It was ace. 

Yeah, it was brilliant. Oh, thank you both for having me. I've really enjoyed it. 

Always, always. It's always a pleasure to spend time with you, Elaine. And you love us more than anything because we can pronounce your surname. 

Yes, yes, full marks. Elaine Mackechnie, that's down to Sarah and her need for absolute accuracy. So, she has drilled that into me. 

Elaine, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure and a privilege. And I have no doubt we will see you really soon. 

But in the meantime, on behalf of myself and Sarah, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Elaine.