Our Story
Hi, this is Dan and Kate, co-founders of Alternative Pathways. We’ve worked together for five years and together have achieved great things in this time, supporting countless young people, not only in their academic studies but in growing as individuals. We’ve laughed together, cried together and, at times, have battled against the odds together to achieve the very best possible outcomes for every young person we’ve worked with.
In an alternate universe none of this would have happened.
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To say that the two of us come from different backgrounds is a huge understatement. I, on the one hand come from a middle-class family with two parents in stable, professional jobs. I encountered relatively few issues in schools, beyond an inability to concentrate and not trying hard enough. I then progressed into university, had a great time and, when I finished, found myself unsure of what to do next. Two years passed before I shrugged and decided to train as a teacher.
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It was at this point that I discovered my true calling. I worked harder than I ever had before and enjoyed (almost) every minute in the classroom. I eagerly took on more and more responsibilities, in one school leading a faculty that covered 15 subjects and in two others taking on sixth form leadership roles. These experiences led me back to Bristol, a city I had lived in 9 years earlier, when I attended university. I took a position on the senior leadership team in a Multi-Academy Trust in Bristol and assumed this would mean being able to influence decisions and having a positive impact on the outcomes and support for more and more young people; I was wrong.
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This is not to necessarily criticise the school or Trust. For the majority of young people, they offered something that worked, and, equipped with a large staff team and sizeable budget they were able to offer support and a package that kept them engaged with education and helped them to progress into college, university or work.
However, I realised that I was far more interested in helping those young people that this approach simply wasn’t working for; those who had been marginalised by the education system and needed far more than the traditional school could offer. I have always felt most connected with those young people that needed something more and that were somehow continuing to show up for school despite everything that was going on in their lives. I had bought kitchen utensils for students terrified about the costs of moving to university, found myself on the phone to the police at 11 at night following distressed messages from young people and shown up at the houses of more students than I care to remember to make sure they didn’t miss an exam.
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The problem was that I didn’t know what this looked like, I just knew I was finished with working in an exam factory where a ‘one size fits all’ approach was adopted by the majority of teachers and school leaders.
I started looking for jobs, with no real idea of what it was that I was looking for. It was at this point that I came across an advert for a Deputy Headteacher at an alternative learning provision and, intrigued, I applied. At this stage I had no idea what alternative learning actually was but everything I read suggested that this was what I was looking for. Before I even started the job, I received a phone call asking if I would act as Headteacher, owing to the sudden departure of the current incumbent. This was something of a shock and I was wracked with nerves but figured I’d give it a go!
Cut to day one and I met Kate; I was extremely nervous about how this was going to work. She was clearly incredibly stressed and had no time for this newcomer, regardless of his job role (she had also
just discovered that she was to be promoted to Deputy Head with little prior warning). Nonetheless, over the following five years we developed a great friendship and worked incredibly closely together. We transformed almost every aspect of the school so that it is unrecognisable to what we took over and I am proud to say that we left on a high with it in the best place it has ever been.
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Over to Kate…
Her background is slightly different to mine.
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Like Dan, I was born in the midlands but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. By the time I was 16 I had moved house 13 times and attended three different primary schools. In one of these I was called a liar when I told them I had been in the top set at my previous school, while in another my name was changed because ‘we can’t have another Katie’. I was even denied a ‘pen licence’ and was forced to write in pencil while my peers showed off their fancy pens.
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Despite all of this, school became a place of comfort for me, a respite from whatever else might be going on. I volunteered for every single school play, joined every after-school club, turned up on INSET days and once I even arrived at school in my nightie because I had missed my alarm (the electric had ran out) and did not want to be late.
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As my primary school days came to an end, I was told I almost certainly had dyslexia, however, nothing was done about this and I found myself thrust into a secondary school with well over 1000 students and no support to help me to handle such a change or the accompanying challenges. Financial concerns at home continued meaning I found myself wearing outdated second-hand uniform and on free school meals, which culminated in an experience's I’ll never forget, prior to a school trip's when I would get called to stand in front of my peers and collect my ‘free food’ for the day.
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I struggled with lessons, not because I was lazy or uninterested, but because the seemingly simple tasks of remembering my timetable or the pressure of writing or answering a question was so immense. The natural result was that my attendance started to drop as I sought solace away from the pressures of school. While I was successful in my GCSEs, the external pressures were, by this point, building as I had a job to support myself, while living arrangements remained, at times, unstable. I went to sixth form simply because my friends did, rather than any burning desire to continue my studies.
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It was at this point, over five years after the initial informal diagnosis, that I was formally diagnosed with dyslexia. Suddenly I started to receive the help that should have been available throughout my school life; a reader, additional time and a separate venue were all provided for exams and teachers were made aware of what support was needed. This helped and yet education wasn't working for me and so, at the age of 17, I left school in search of full-time employment in restaurants and bars.
A chance conversation with a friend’s mum led to a day spent volunteering at a youth centre. I absolutely loved it. Soon I was dropping in to watch sessions and I quickly found myself volunteering and then employed to run sessions of my own.
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This was great and I take genuine pride in the work we did with the young people that attended, but by my mid 20s it was time for a new adventure and I moved to Bristol, where I took a job ‘supporting young people struggling to engage with school’. Little did I know that the ‘school’ was no more than me and one colleague, plus a community centre of 20 young people!
This job progressed and over the course of 11 years I held just about every job in the school, growing it from its humble roots to an established, Ofsted GOOD, full-time alternative learning provision. In 2019 I found myself unexpectedly promoted to Deputy Head, met Dan and the rest is history!
