I'm going to duck that question. It is easier to say something about what I do.

The fashionable phrase at the moment for what I do in education seems to be "practitioner teacher". I am one. Before a recent career change, I had been employed as a full-time lecturer at a College of Further Education for some fourteen years, having previously taught both in the private sector and at an 11-18 comprehensive. Currently I teach English Literature and Theatre Studies to A level, and while in the FE sector taught A level English Language and Literature, Media and Film Studies. I was also a founder member of an Access to Higher Education for mature students, which ran successfully for over a decade. I've been involved in helping students apply for university since the days when UCAS was called UCCA.

Students who have used my "Informal Guide" sometimes assume that I went to Oxford or Cambridge myself. That is not the case. I read English at London University and loved it there. The College I attended has since been merged with another, but at that time we were based in a central, leafy area where the English Faculty's home was a Regency building which overlooked a lake. It was a good place to learn and I was ready to appreciate it, since by the time I got there I had lived abroad and worked 9.00-5.00 for some years. The experience turned me into a passionate believer in the value of a university education for everyone who has the ability to learn and the will to apply.

In one respect this website is a natural development from an enthusiasm for the web and for electronic communication in general. If nothing else Scintillae makes information readily available to friends and students from outside my college, who from time to time ask for informal advice about applying to university. If the site should turn out to have a wider currency, then all the better.

In another respect Scintillae, particularly the FAQ section, owes its origin not only to questions raised by my students, but also to posts made by students to the newsgroup alt.uk.a-levels. To some degree scintillae.org.uk is intended to complement and overlap with another site which evolved out of alt.uk.a-levels, www.oxbridge-admissions.org.uk / http://oa.waveflex.com, which was set up by James Gregory (recently graduated from York University) at a time when he was an A level student and major contributor to the group. He did nearly all the initial work for that site, helped by suggestions and contributions from other regulars in the newsgroup, including Barry Whyte (York), Becca Taylor (Birmingham), Jennie Lees (Trinity, Cambridge) and myself. When James took up his place at York in October 2000, Jennie became webmistress of the oxbridge site. She revised and developed it very considerably over the following year, using her status as an undergraduate to raise awareness of the site in Cambridge and get further contributions. I played a part in spreading word about the oxbridge site and helped Jennie expand the database of Oxford student profiles. I'm very grateful that she has lent me her expertise for the creation of Scintillae, and I now offer additional thanks to Simon Lowndes for carrying out the updates to this site for me in October 2003.