Neil Crumpton
Secondary and Post Compulsory Education
Neil studied for his undergraduate degree at the University of Bradford studying Electronic, Communication and Computer Engineering. He then went on to work as a software engineer in Research and Development for Northern Telecom, later Nortel Networks, a multi-national telecoms infrastructure manufacturer. Whilst working for Nortel, Neil was part of the team that pioneered implementations for Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol (L2TP), Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) broadband access, and Fibre to the Home. Neil then went to work for a start-up, quantumBEAM, near Cambridge developing line-of-sight, rapid deployment networks using infra-red lasers.
During this time, Neil volunteered with The Scout Association and discovered his passion for sharing knowledge with young people which led him to undertake a Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP) with QTS at Saffron Walden and Comberton Training School specialising in Science and ICT.
Neil has taught Science, ICT and Physics at a range of different and contrasting comprehensive schools, including working as a pastoral lead and subsequently as a Head of Science for almost ten years. During this time, Neil led various teacher training events based around the formative assessment work of Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black. This experience led to him joining the PGCE team at Worcester in 2019 and securing a consultancy role with the North Midlands Science Learning Partnership and Secondary Lead for the North Midlands Computing Hub, all organisations focus on providing quality, research-led CPD for teachers in the fields of Science and Computing.
In addition to being a university tutor for some of the trainees, Neil also facilitates the Physics Subject Knowledge Enhancement Course for postgraduates enabling prospective trainee science teachers to develop and hone their KS3-5 subject-specific knowledge and understanding.