Millbay Academy teacher Alex Boyce has been honoured with a national prize for her outstanding commitment to her students in the most challenging of circumstances. Alex won a Silver Award for Teacher of the Year at the BTEC Awards for going above and beyond to make sure her students continued to learn despite the challenges of the pandemic.

During the first lockdown in particular, Alex threw herself into remote learning, creating individualised videos for each of her students to ensure they still received the one-on-one attention they would need to improve. In each video she recorded herself discussing the work they had sent her, feeding back on specific points of improvement and sharing her screen so students could watch her mark their work.

This is despite the fact that this was the first year that Millbay Academy had offered the BTEC Tech Award in Sport, Activity and Fitness , meaning that it was Alex’s first year of teaching it. Despite the challenges of doing so remotely, Alex’s incredible commitment and dedication to creating individual videos meant that her students remained engaged and motivated to learn throughout the lockdowns.

Russ Martin Head of Vocational Faculty said:

“Alex is an exceptional teacher who is always willing to go the extra mile to make sure her students get the best possible experience, regardless of the challenges they face. This last year has been so hard on all of our students, but Alex has worked so hard to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and to keep her class learning throughout it all.

“The BTEC Awards judges were looking for teachers who showed an outstanding commitment to learning, not just during the pandemic but throughout their wider teaching, and Alex absolutely meets that criteria. She really deserves this award, and we are all so proud of her!”

Alex said:

“The award was such a surprise and it’s incredible to receive it! I wasn’t expecting it at all but it’s absolutely amazing to be nominated and to be told that I’ve won it. The last year has been really hard and we’ve all done whatever we can to support our students, and I’m just really grateful to win the award.

“It’s really an award for the whole team here – I’m lucky enough to work with fantastic colleagues and wonderful students and it means so much to all of us. It’s a real privilege to work at a school like Millbay which supports us all to be our best.”

The BTEC Awards are in their 11^th year and are held to celebrate outstanding practitioners in the field. BTECs have helped generations of learners from different walks of life succeed and prosper.