Mr Simon Wardle
Teacher of English
Simon Wardle joined Silcoates in September 2011, becoming Head of English in 2014. Having been educated in Torquay and on the Isle of Wight, he obtained a first class degree in English from the University of Bristol, where he specialised in Shakespeare and Old English.
After working for the Department for Work and Pensions, Simon then studied for a Master’s degree in English at St John’s College, Oxford, where he focused on sixteenth and seventeenth century drama. His Master’s research involved a detailed study of prayer in Shakespeare’s first cycle of history plays. Simon then returned to Devon to complete his teacher training, before moving to Yorkshire.
Simon has continued to develop his subject expertise in recent years by becoming an external examiner for IGCSE and A Level English, as well as writing academic articles for publication. His article about Shakespeare’s King Lear, ‘His Knights Grow Riotous’, was published in E-Magazine: The Magazine for Advanced Level English, and analysed the presentation of servants, knights and attendants. In ‘Justice and Revenge in Othello’, also published in E-Magazine, Simon interpreted Shakespeare’s play through the lens of the seventeenth century genre of ‘revenge tragedy’.
In addition to teaching English, Simon runs the school’s Debating Society for Years 9, 10 and 11. As well as school competitions, such as House Debating and House Public Speaking, Simon has coached many successful teams for local and national competitions. In particular, he has coached teams for the prestigious English Speaking Union’s Public Speaking Competition, reaching the North-East Regional Final on many occasions, as well as the National Final in Cambridge in 2016, where the team reached the last eight of over four hundred teams across the country.