Vy Van is a former Ashbourne student who studied at the college between 2002 and 2003.

He achieved excellent academic results having studied A levels in Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Biology and proceeded on to Imperial College London to study Mathematics. He has since completed his degree and moved to America, where he has been instrumental in helping to transform The Sam Houston High School for Science, Math, and Technology from a failing institution to one of excellence, a turnaround that has been of great local interest

The school was well below national academic standards and Vy was faced with an extraordinary challenge in bringing his Maths students up to a reasonable level. He inherited a group of students who had a 30% pass rate in Maths; some of whom, he recalls ‘were still counting on their fingers’; he used a variety of innovative teaching methods and made up songs to help the students learn complicated mathematical formulae.

He became very close to his students by encouraging them to believe in themselves and raising their self-confidence. He invited them to regularly write their dreams on his whiteboard as a way of bringing out their ambitions. In 2009, his students came out with an 86% success rate in Algebra.

Vy remains in contact with staff at Ashbourne and the college is equally keen to follow his remarkable development into an inspirational figure.