Ian Wright on the ball for education at Telford event
Former England striker Ian Wright paid tribute to the power of education at a teaching conference in Telford, drawing on his own remarkable experience with a life-changing teacher.
The ex-Arsenal forward was speaking at the Alliance of Leading Learning conference at the Telford International Centre, where he was a keynote speaker.
He discussed his troubled childhood and his struggles in school, and paid tribute to Sydney Pigden, the teacher who got through to him when others couldn’t.
About 450 delegates from schools across the UK were at yesterday's conference, organised by the Marches Academy Trust and held for the first time at the International Centre. Wright, 55, was one of three keynote speakers at the event.
In his talk on the power of education, Wright said that after a difficult childhood that saw him often fighting and excluded from school, he was taken under Mr Pigden’s wing.
He said: “I think everything I have achieved somewhere down the line, it leads back to my teacher. Education is important to everyone. For me, my teacher Mr Pigden made me realise how important it is to have someone that believes in you.
“He was my very first role model, the main role model in my life. He saw something in me even before he knew I could play football.”
Wright grew up in London to abusive and neglectful parents, and violence was a common occurrence at home.
He said: “My mum was an alcoholic, my dad smoked a lot of weed. I had two older brothers and a younger sister, my stepfather wasn’t very keen on me. I was always very angry.”
At school he would struggle to keep up and would become disruptive.
It was during one such exclusion, aged seven, when Mr Pigden encountered him in the school corridor and decided to try to reach him a different way.
“That’s when it started to happen for me,” said Wright. “He started to teach me how to read and write properly.
“He said ‘Just calm down, relax a minute and then tell me what the problem is’.
“He would literally go through it step by step. I would be so excited to read the bit I had been doing without stumbling.
“I used to collect the register, I used to love doing that. He made me milk monitor as well. What I didn’t realise at the time was he was giving me responsibility and confidence.”
A tearful Wright recalled getting a letter from Mr Pigden when he made his debut for England to congratulate him, and saying it was one of his proudest moments. Mr Pigden died in 2017.
“I wouldn’t be here without Mr Pigden,” said Wright.
