Early career: Mustafa Mahmoud

I trained to be a chemistry teacher but when I applied for my teaching position, I was told they needed a physics teacher! Physics was not far from my mind, but it was not something I ever thought I would be teaching. After my own school experience, I had just never really fallen in love with it and didn’t take it at A-level, but I thought let’s give it a go and the rest is history! Now every day I am falling in love more and more with the subject.

I now teach KS3 right the way through to A-level physics – we currently have about 35 A-level physicists, but I want to try and increase that number especially with more female students. I have brought visitors into the school to show more diversity in physics and I recently took a team of Year 10 female scientists to a physics competition, and they came second – one student who had never thought of doing physics will now be taking it at A-level and another two are considering it.

I was first introduced to the Ogden Trust when I was doing my PGCE and I took part in some online foundation in physics sessions with the Trust; as an early career teacher I joined the Teaching Core Physics programme and now in my second year of teaching I am on the Developing Physics Specialism (DPS) programme. I also received an Ogden grant to run a physics club at my school and I am completing an Ogden-supported Master’s.

I would honestly say that the Early Career programme from The Ogden Trust is the best thing that teachers can do because there is so much support. It is good to have that community, to have that mentor, other teachers you can talk to and share ideas with. The face-to-face support with my DPS mentor has been invaluable. They really listen to what we are all doing and see us put ideas into practice, so there is bit of all of us in the programme! I would highly recommend it to any teacher.

Mustafa Mahmoud
Physics Teacher
Alperton Community School
(March 2024)

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