A MATURE student from Beaminster has been recognised for her outstanding academic achievements.

Wendy Holloway, 51, has been rewarded a £1,000 Academic Scholarship Award for her achievements throughout the 2019/20 academic year, despite the unprecedented circumstances created by the global pandemic.

She is studying for a Foundation Degree in Teaching and Learning, but says her path back into education was more than 30 years in the making.

Wendy said: “I’ve never won anything in my life and to win recognition for something so important to me is really precious. The Scholarship gives me the confidence to believe in myself more and trust that I can achieve what I have set out to do.”

“I’ve always felt that I under-achieved at school. I had wanted to be a history lecturer, but I left sixth form before I finished my A-levels as I was a headstrong teenager and wanted to go out and earn money. No-one in my family had ever gone on to higher education, so it wasn’t really frowned on that I gave up.

“When my first son started school, I became a school governor and helped out in classes, which rekindled my desire to teach. It was a distant dream though, as I had no A-levels or degree and two children under five. When my second son started school, I did an online teaching and learning diploma with a primary school teaching assistant placement. This enabled me to get a special educational needs teaching assistant role, which I really enjoyed.”

It was through this work that led Wendy to the path to begin a work-based foundation degree at the University of Worcester, delivered locally through Somerset SCIL, near Ilminster.

Wendy said: “It was an enormous change for me and my family. It was incredibly difficult juggling so much high-level academic study in the first year and a shock for my children to have so much less ‘mummy time’. It was emotional for me too.

“I put everything into my assignments. I felt that if I was going to put everyone in my family through so much change, then I was going to work my socks off and do my absolute best. I was encouraged by receiving good grades and positive feedback for my assignments – it showed I was on the right track. However, when I received notification of the scholarship, I couldn’t believe it; I still can’t really.”