“Right Year 10, today you are going to be set designers,” Juliet Doyle tells her maths class.
It’s a sunny Friday afternoon, and this is the last lesson of the day. And yet, 30 pairs of eyes are firmly fixed on Doyle, as she explains that, in pairs, they’ll spend the afternoon designing three sets for a new film.
For these students, who attend Bexleyheath Academy, part of the Academies Enterprise Trust (AET), in south-east London, lessons like this are not out of the ordinary - in fact, they are used to careers education being taught in their maths lessons.
Over the next hour, students get to grips with dimensions and learn how to build a 3D set from a 2D drawing.
As they pack up their bags at the end of the lesson, Faye turns to her friend Jess and says: “I want to be a set designer now.”
Jess responds: “I’ve got around 30 jobs that I want to do, it’s so difficult to choose”.
This discussion is music to Doyle’s ears: she wants her students to walk away from her lesson enthused about the possibility of a career in the creative industries. It’s not an objective that other maths teachers might share - but that’s something Doyle wants to change.
Source tes magazine