I believe education is a tool to be valued across the world, it should be available to every child, teenager and adult who wants and needs it. I think education should be centred around the pupil and their needs. I greatly value the skills education brings to the world, without it we would have no doctors, no lawyers, no politicians, no shopkeepers, no farmers and no society.

In my interview for the University of Dundee, I was asked to prepare a presentation based on a quote from Malala Yousafzai’s UN speech. This quote was: “one child, one teacher, one pen and one book. Can change the world.” My interpretation of this was that she believed that no matter what race, gender, religion, etc. a child is, they should all have the right to an education and, if they are given this right, they will be able to do whatever they please, even change the world. I did, and still do, agree with this statement and believe Education is a powerful tool which, if given correctly and universally, can be used to achieve anything.

I think children should have a say in their learning and that their ideas and interests should be taken on board within the classroom. Children can be very creative and I believe this should be encouraged and they should come up with their own ways of taking in and sharing knowledge. In my opinion, it is important for children to work together within the classroom as this does not only help them accumulate knowledge but it gives them vital skills for later in life. Collaborative working will help the children gain confidence and prepare them for working in teams when they have left education and entered the working world. Not only does working together help the children but it will also benefit the teacher. Through my time in the Working Together social work module in first year, I learnt the importance of collaborative working between professionals such as teachers, social workers, health workers and the police. Despite this, I also believe independent working is also very important as it teaches the children not to rely on others and helps them build confidence in themselves.  Therefore, I believe it is important for teachers and pupils to be able to enter an equilibrium of independent and team working.

In my opinion, discipline is very important within the school, without it there would constantly be disorder and disruption. I think it is important to find the correct form of discipline and I believe it should be implemented throughout the entire school. However, I also believe it is important to look at each child individually and find a form of discipline that suits them. I believe the best form of discipline is positive reinforcement. I think it is much better to reward the good than to punish the bad as this means the well behaved children are getting the majority of the attention rather than the misbehaved ones. This would hopefully encourage the misbehaved children to behave well in order to gain attention from their peers and from the teacher. I attended two different primary schools as a child, both of which had very different ideas towards discipline. My first school was very much focussed around a reward system, we had a whole school star chart and the class with the most stars at the end of the week were given 5 minutes extra playtime on a Friday morning. My second school was much more focussed around a punishment system. Each class had a behaviour sheet and for every time your name was written on this sheet you would lose 5 minutes of golden time on a Friday afternoon. I think the star chart system was a much better way of dealing with behaviour, not only did it include whole class achievements but also personal achievements. I think it also encouraged good behaviour as nobody wanted to get no stars and possibly cost their class extra playtime. I think this also encouraged teamwork and friendly competition between classes.