Hilary EyleyGAZETTE: TEACHER Hilary Eyley, who scooped a regional award, will be joining 145 other category winners from across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, all hoping to win one of the ten National Teaching Awards up for grabs.

The special needs co-ordinator at Corsham Primary School won the West of England regional award for excellence in special needs teaching, after being nominated by a colleague.

Next week the category winners will join a host of celebrities, including Sir Richard Attenborough and actor Bill Nighy, leading educationalists and Government ministers who will gather to pay tribute to the teaching profession.

Mrs Eyley said she was flattered to win the regional award.

"It's a bit overwhelming and I can't quite grasp it, especially when I know there are so many good teachers putting a lot of effort in," she said.

In the last six years Mrs Eyley has established an effective and secure learning centre within Corsham Primary School for pupils who experience speech and language difficulties.

"It's about team work," she said. "We work collaboratively with speech and language therapists."

The unit, called the Brook Centre, caters for 18 children and is a regional centre taking pupils from other schools. Although it is a specialist centre, the emphasis is very much on inclusion.

In the last three years Mrs Eyley's help and support has enabled 15 children to rejoin their local community schools.

"It's an incredibly rewarding career," she said. "It's very intensive teaching and it takes a huge amount of patience.

"We have been very successful with many of the children. We aim to integrate them into mainstream schools and we have had lots of successes."

Mrs Eyley, who started teaching 28 years ago, won £2,000 cash and more than £2,500 worth of computer equipment, including an interactive white board for the primary school by winning the regional award. If she scoops one of the ten national awards, the school will benefit from more than £25,000 in cash grants and computer equipment.

The sixth annual teaching awards national ceremony, hosted by Eamonn Holmes, will be televised on Sunday and has been described as the teaching profession's answer to the Oscars.

It aims to celebrate excellence and promote best practice in education.

As a mainstream teacher, Mrs Eyley became intrigued by a language and speech impairment in one of her young reception pupils and that's how she came to specialise in it.

"I had a child who had complex learning difficulties," she said. "I became fascinated by the impairment and trained to specialise in it. I became more and more interested in the complexities of learning."

Speaking about the favourite thing about her job, Mrs Eyley said: "Definitely the children.

"I feel incredibly privileged to work in this school. They are very hard working children. They have to work a lot harder than mainstream children and they put a lot of effort in."

Mrs Eyley leads a team of two teachers and three teaching assistants, and also manages her own professional development needs.

She takes accredited training in speech and language, and also in counselling skills, so she is able to offer a high quality of support to parents.

Parents, pupils, colleagues and governors from across the West of England, decided the regional winners by voting online. Then a regional awards panel, made up of representatives from the education community, visited short listed nominees.

Teaching Awards panel members described meeting Mrs Eyley as a privilege, while a parent heaped praise on the Brook Centre by saying: "It is excellent.

"It was the best decision of our lives for our son to attend this school. He thrives in this environment."