Hairdressing lecturer at North East Surrey College of Technology (Nescot) Lisa Charles is basking in the glow of a double celebration. Just weeks after one of her learners, Reanna Chambers, was named the Association of Colleges adult student of the year, Charles, who leads Nescot’s hair and beauty department, was last month named the Pearson National Teaching Awards FE lecturer of the year.

Charles’s role these days is more about psychology than hair styling. She often has a long line of anxious young learners waiting outside her office door to talk, many of whom, like her, missed much of their schooling.

“We’ve all got an autobiography – but we have to rewrite our future,” she tells them.

Charles and her colleagues were left devastated last year by the suicide of a former student, and Charles wants to use the limelight of her award to raise awareness of mental health issues that many young people face, especially when they leave formal education and associated support networks. 

Her own story began when, aged just 18 months, Charles was blinded in one eye by her father during a violent outburst. She and her mum went back and forth from the family home to different women’s refuges, until her mum remarried when she was 12. But her new husband was also abusive. 

Charles credits her husband, whom she met when she was just 15, with saving her life by encouraging her to train as a hairdresser. Life at first was incredibly tough for the couple, who were only able to buy dinner if Charles made enough money in tips that day from washing hair.

A doctor gave them an oven after realising they were both suffering malnutrition. But after having her daughter at age 18, Charles trained to be an assessor, then a hairdressing teacher at Kingston College before starting at Nescot 15 years ago.

Here is what her typical day looks like…

5.30am

I get up and give my French bulldog, Rodney, a cuddle. Some things that students have told me the day before were buzzing around in my head through the night, so I didn’t sleep well. 

Some learners who are more needy do gravitate towards me. Last year, a student who was very close with us all died by suicide after finishing her course. The whole team was devastated. I still think about her lots and how she shared that her time at college was so happy. 

I’d love to use my award win to try to help young people who struggle when they finish college. Sometimes they lack the wider support and life skills they need, and there aren’t always jobs for them.

I worry that some young people aren’t resilient enough for this world. I feel very strongly that more needs to be done to support them.

7.00am

I check my phone to see if any staff are calling in sick that day, so I can arrange lesson cover. I’ll phone a learner to get them out of bed if that’s what I told them I’d do; it’s about being consistent. I don’t eat breakfast or lunch, as I don’t have time. And I drink too much Pepsi! 

I’m responsible for 160 students on our hair and beauty courses, which is up 50 on last year. I put the increase down to us having the best team we’ve ever had.

But we haven’t been able to recruit enough teachers for all the new students, so I’m teaching more sessions myself. We’ve gone to market a few times, but it can be hard to recruit teachers and tempt people away from industry and salons. 

8.30am

I arrive at college and after a quick chat with colleagues, I check my emails. They’re often from parents explaining that their young person is too anxious to come in.

Some of the young people who were in our 14-16 provision last year have moved onto our mainstream courses and need more hand-holding. The first couple of months are always difficult, with the jump they have to make from doing functional skills to English and maths GCSEs. Then you see them strutting down the corridors like they’ve been here forever!

Often these days, learners come in with ADHD, ADD or dyslexia. At Nescot, I am proud that we are inclusive of all of our learners. In fact, I think we’re all a little different.

But we are realistic with learners as to the expectations of what the employer is looking for so we can prepare them for the industry. It shouldn’t be about categorising and pigeonholing. Everybody’s individual, we just need to get to know each learner and how to support them. 

I like to have a couple of lessons with my new students before I read their profiles from their previous place of learning, because I might build a different rapport with them than their last teacher did. It’s interesting; if you let a student read what’s been written about them previously, quite often they think it doesn’t describe them at all. 

Some young people lack the course entry requirements, but I believe they still deserve a chance. 

I remember on enrolment day in 2016 meeting Maria, a member of the traveller community who had no qualifications but who really wanted to become a hairdresser.

I was aware that there could be some unfair stereotyping given to this community and that the learner had no formal schooling, so technically didn’t meet the entry requirements for the course. But when I called the informal school that Maria had attended, her teacher was so complimentary about her that, with my manager’s support, we were able to accept her on the course.

Maria turned out to be an absolute angel. Five years later, I put her sister Reanna on a level one hairdressing course and in her first year she also passed her GCSE maths and English, which was unheard of. She now specialises in bridal hair for the traveller community.

I couldn’t be prouder of her winning the AoC’s adult learner of the year award. She’s opened the door for others, too. A positive has also been that our learners no longer stick to groups or backgrounds of culture, race or familiarity – they mix as one group of learners. 

9.00am

It’s like a doctor’s waiting room with all the people sitting outside my office door. We have a great wellbeing hub downstairs that I work with, but sometimes learners I have a rapport with will come to me first. 

Sometimes I just need a minute on my own, because some of what’s happening with these young people can be very upsetting.

I can’t turn them away, and if they’re very upset I end up sitting with them for some time. I always keeptwo boxes of tissues on my table and have lots of leaflets about coping with stress. 

‘Anxious’ is the word that they use all the time to describe how they’re feeling, but sometimes it’s a word that’s overused. I’ll say, ‘are you anxious? Or are you just a little bit worried? And is that maybe not a bad thing that you’re a little bit concerned about whether you’re going to pass?’

I’ll work from home tomorrow, so I can get my schemes of work done without being interrupted. 

9.30am

I meet with my principal, Julie Kapsalis, about getting a pop-up salon opened up in our main reception area, offering free haircuts for the homeless. The space is mostly empty, and opening a salon up would help us to provide much-needed work experience opportunities for our learners.

Work experience is a course requirement, but some learners feel awkward about going into a workplace straight away with people they don’t know, especially those who missed a lot of schooling. Some salons expect these kids to suddenly know how to talk to strangers, and they don’t. 

This salon would give more vulnerable students a stepping stone by helping them build their confidence. I’d run it in the evenings – it has to be separate from college learning hours.

1.30pm

I spend the afternoon doing performance reviews with staff or observing their lessons. 

It’s lovely to see the rapport that a lecturer has built up with their students. The little bit of success that a learner has made that day can’t necessarily be tick-boxed. For some students, it’s a massive achievement just for them to be there.

I’ve found that having a learning support assistant working exclusively with a particular student can be problematic, because often they won’t utilise them. Many students have a learning need of some sort, but that’s not always defined on paper.

So, if you’ve got a learning assistant going around supporting everybody rather than focusing on a particular student, then that student who is deemed to need the help may actually take it. But if they’re homing in on them constantly, they refuse it. Nobody wants to feel singled out.

3.00pm

I have a meeting with a parent. I get parents in here all the time. I’d rather have a friendly chat with them first about behaviour issues and work with them before starting formal procedures. It’s important to manage parent/carer expectations as well as students’.

Sometimes there can be sensitivities around intimate treatments like Brazilian waxing. When a male learner, Craig, started with us on a beauty course, the mum of another learner wanted me to ask him to leave, and talked about going to the newspapers because she didn’t agree with having a boy in the group.

I said, ‘I’m really sorry you feel like that, but all students deserve an education’ and we are sensitive to all differences whilst being inclusive. After talking to the parent in person, they did not challenge any further. Craig is an absolutely beautiful therapist, and has now progressed onto our hairdressing course.

4.30pm  

After classes, it’s my CPD time. I’m doing a colour degree with L’Oreal, and I’m working with them to get a new colouring qualification off the ground in colleges. I’ve been part of a steering group with six other colleges helping L’Oreal to tailor the course to our curriculums. We’ll be the first colleges globally to pilot this qualification, which is fantastic.

At Nescot, we have just started offering hairdressing apprenticeships, which is bucking the national trend. Apprentice numbers in hairdressing and beauty have dropped heavily, from 16,000 to 6,000 between 2016 and 2023.

A lot of salons don’t want the aggravation of paying an apprenticeship wage, and some young people think they can teach themselves how to do the job using social media. I think L’Oreal recognises that they need to work with colleges to maintain standards in the profession. 

6.00pm

I do some hairdressing for friends myself after work, because I think it’s important to keep my hand in the trade and it’s a way to socialise. 

Being a hairdresser isn’t just about cutting hair; it’s about empathy. In our industry, we’ll often be among the first people that someone with a serious medical condition talks to about it.

I remember as a young hairdresser, one lady wanting wacky colours put in her hair. She’d just been told she had terminal cancer, and walked straight into our salon. When you go home at night, you think about those things.

You can’t always learn the soft skills that students need for those conversations in a college environment, so, once a month, I take our students to the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton to provide haircuts and beauty treatments for children with cancer and their families. 

When I first suggested going, a lot of the students were very apprehensive. But now they all want to go! Some get a real rapport with the patients, and find the experience very humbling.

7.00pm

I’ll normally put my laptop on when I get home, but I hoovered up and put Fleetwood Mac on instead! Otherwise, I’d be checking Google Classrooms to see photographs and films of the work our learners have done.

It was blow-dries today. I’m also interested to see what they’ve done in other people’s lessons. One clip was a student dancing. It’s lovely to see them enjoying themselves. We post the best pictures and videos on Instagram, which also helps us with our student recruitment.

10.00pm

I start to read – it’s normally what I call ‘no-think reading’ on my Kindle, and within 10 minutes I’m asleep.

When I was doing my teacher training, I remember experiencing snobbery from some other teachers who saw hairdressing lecturing as ‘not really teaching.’ I occasionally still experience prejudice in the form of lower expectations some people have of our learners.

A number of years ago, I heard a staff member in a meeting saying, ‘that’s a good group because they’ve got really good GCSEs, and this other group will be the naughty group’. I said, ‘if that’s how you feel about the students, we should be rethinking what our job is’.

I hope I can dispel those myths – it’s what the college does so well. My team works 24-7. This isn’t a nine-to-five role. But I feel very fortunate that I absolutely love my job.