Graeme Duncan

A PE Teacher for Fife Council, Graeme also helps to support positive pupil mental health and aid their journey into further education after school.

"Dundee is a great city to live in and has so much to offer for students."
Graeme Duncan | Fife Council | PE Teacher

Abertay was very important in helping me get to where I am now! For me ,the most important part was working with different groups and individuals – every lecturer is different, and has different interests. You work on group tasks with different students and it helps you interact with different people.

I was captain of the football team at Abertay and that was one of the main driving forces for me. It gave me an interest outside of the lectures and tutorials, and helped shape where I wanted to go with my life.

I’ll always recommend that people join a sports team when they go to university. I made friends for life from all over the country.

PE Teacher- In 2019 after completing my PGDE I was appointed as a full-time PE Teacher at Bell Baxter HS, Cupar. As a teacher I delieverd Broad General Education lessons for s1-s3 pupils and Senior Phase pupils including National 5 and Higher. In order to support our pupils gain additional qualifications, I have set up and ran an SFA Refereeing Award and an NPA Sport and Fitness, both qualifications are designed to support pupils into positive destinations. 

Guidance Teacher- In 2021 I was promoted to a Principal Teacher in Guidance. This role required me to provide pastoral support to my year group, this includes developing their curriculum to support their needs and working closely with external partners to support any mental health concerns. In addition to this I have supported a large number of pupils to secure a positive destination, this has included providing over 100 references to pupils applying for university. 

I used to work as Active Schools Co-ordinator with Fife Council. My job was to get children more physically active before, during and after school. I mainly did that through volunteer recruitment and working with local clubs. We tried to stay away from paid coaches and aimed to make all activities free of charge. It was a very varied job. One day you could be focussing on rugby for seniors at a high school, the next you could be working on a cross country event for kids at a primary school. It was a very varied job! These projects are absolutely essential, especially within Scotland. We have an obesity crisis and children can find it a lot more interesting to go home and play on their iPad or Xbox. These programmes help to keep children interested in sport and physical activity.

I always see us as being the first step towards introducing children to sport. We might put on an after school football class and that might be the first opportunity they have to take part in that sport. Then they might progress into their local club, and perhaps carry on that pathway.

View the BSc (Hons) Sports Development and Coaching course

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