Vicky Bingham is Headteacher of North London Collegiate Prep School. Not many of her charges? parents know that on a Friday afternoon she swaps Play-Doh and papier-mâché to oversee the training of 70 submariner controllers on a Saturday. Here she tells us how her naval training helps shape, inform and prepare her for her life in education?
“I?ve been a serving warfare officer and submarine controller in the Royal Navy Reserve ever since I left my full-time job as a naval rating to become a teacher. I still get raised eyebrows of surprise from parents and colleagues when they discover I am a Lieutenant Commander!
Although my authoritative style might hint at my past, most parents at North London Collegiate Prep School where I am now headteacher have no idea about the Royal Navy side of my life. Just hours after waving off the children on a Friday afternoon, I might well be heading off to plan and execute a complex solution to an anti-submarine warfare task. Or come the school holidays, helping to run a NATO exercise.
I?ve been in primary education now for more than 25 years but my training as a warfare officer in the navy still very much informs how I teach and how I relate to the pupils. You?d be surprised how much  these two seemingly starkly different sides of my professional identity go together. 
In fact, the soft skills I learnt in the navy have created a foundation for how and what I teach. When  I joined up back in 1991 straight out of an all-girls second...