Schools across West Cumbria can rejoice with Keri Taylor on the scene, as the tuition and exam centre owner has a teaching life-saver in the making.

The Workington-based private tutor has expanded her business, and is getting a bank of supply teachers and teaching assistants together to offer to schools.

The 43-year-old first started tutoring in 2008, after completing her teacher training at St Martin’s College in Ambleside via distance-learning for two years in 2006.

Although she had the added nerves of being 38-weeks-pregnant with her daughter, Keri was thrilled to be accepted on to the course, and began training to become a fully qualified teacher when her baby was just a few months old.

The mum of four has always focused more on having contracts at Broughton Moor Primary School teaching Years Two, Three and Four, and at West Lakes Academy teaching maths.

Using her dining room as a classroom, Keri’s group of students grew, and in February 2013, she took the leap and moved into her first tutoring premises in Whitehaven Market Place, and recruited fellow tutors to help her keep up with demand.

From then on the service only increased, and KT Tuition moved to its current premises on Harrington Street, Workington, in February 2017. Keri’s business has since become an accredited exams centre, and also offers GCSE courses.

The hard-working tutor is proud of her service, and boasts 50 tutors on her books, who are available to teach the 800 clients Keri currently works with.

As the service had offered tutors to schools on a one-to-one basis as well as to groups of pupils, Keri thought that it would make “perfect sense” to begin offering teachers for entire classes.

She said: “When GCSEs have finished in June, we always go pretty quiet for a couple of months, and as I’m a bit of a workaholic I decided I would take on some supply work, being a qualified teacher.

“I contacted an agency I had worked for previously, and then it occurred to me that I could actually become an agent myself – I manage qualified teachers already, after all! We have been offering tutors on a one-to-one and group basis to schools since 2013, so it made perfect sense to start offering teachers for whole classes.”

And with a team of almost 20 teachers and teaching assistants already onboard with the idea, the Whitehaven tutor is excited to continue building her team before rolling out the service to schools in September. Keri has already had a positive response from the many schools that she has been in touch with, with some providing her with information on how she could provide the best service to them – advice that is welcomed by the “workaholic”.

September can’t come soon enough for the team of raring-to-go teachers!