Achievers Within: How we started

Achievers Within Educational Ltd., is the creation of a deep realisation of the moral obligations teachers and mentors have over the children and students they are responsible for.

The compelling story of Emmanuel, a science teacher in the heart of West Croydon- London undergoing a turbulent journey with the students at his school, realising as a mentor that the very students that should be his mentees mentored him, threw him into the world of new discoveries.

Emmauel took interest in working with disadvantaged children and students after a 16-year-old girl broke his finger just eight days after becoming a teacher for the first. The thoughts that a student could exhibit such a violent behaviour was unimaginable. Emmanuel became even more determined to help the young girl to succeed after hearing the disturbing background story of the girl- a girl from the council estate, abandoned by his mother, who now lives with her grandmother that hardly could control her. This girl had become street wise.

Years later, Emmanuel continued his work with other students in similar situations typically from low-income families, low aspirations and very low academic predictions. In fact, many of the students have not been given any chances to succeed or leave secondary school with good GCSE qualifications. Teachers disqualified students with the ‘strokes of their pens’, disregarding students because they do not achieve academic successes in the classroom. By mentoring and working closely with the students, Emmanuel soon realised the achievers the students were within themselves. Emmanuel engaged many of the students with sporting activities or just with the things they were interested in that is not academics. His dedication to the students outside of the classroom soon yielded academic successes with his first mentee leaving school with eight GCSEs including A and B grades, having earlier been predicted with three GCSEs at E and F grades.

In 2009, Emmanuel was awarded the Marcus Garvey Award for Outstanding Teacher of the year, and his mentoring was captured in the Croydon Advertiser Newspaper. Emmanuel has gone on to have mentoring and coaching influences of several young people that have shaped and redefined their lives and future. He declares that much more learning happens outside of the classroom, and that even children or students who fail in academics are Achievers’ Within themselves. His many works are captured in his book published in 2014 called ‘Inside the Mentor’ (click here to purchase a copy). His mentoring model has been successfully used as projects for the National Professional Qualification NPQs, and Emmanuel wishes that someday many schools will deploy teachers to learn, accelerate and steer many disaffected young people back into academic learning and success by engaging with them in their interests outside of the classroom. The launch of the Achievers Within Sports Award (AWSA) targeting disadvantage children and those children in care, is a testament to his determination to see many children succeed in life.

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