YASMIN Gedney from Blaenavon Heritage Community School in Blaenavon has won the Award for Teaching Assistant of the Year in Wales for 2012.

To date the Pearson Teaching Awards has helped generate 100,000 nominations from pupils past and present, parents and a plethora of celebrities supporting the Awards.

Each nomination is received in the form of an online Thank You message to a teacher who has made a real difference before each note of thanks is considered by the judging panel.

The judges said that Yasmin is an 'outstanding' teaching assistant and added: "She is regarded as an exceptional member of the staff team and her professionalism and great care for all the pupils past and present is widely valued throughout the whole school community.

"She treats every pupil as an individual educationally, personally and socially and is so involved that she is fully aware of every pupil's needs, challenges and requirements."

Prior to starting her career as a Teaching Assistant, she was a care assistant and a qualified nursery nurse, she has therefore devoted her entire career to the care of others, and this is obvious in her total consideration for the young people in her care. Pupils describe her as "awesome" and "always smiling" – and colleagues agree, one class teacher referred to her as "outstanding".

Yasmin will join the other winning teachers from across England and Northern Ireland at the prestigious UK Ceremony, which will be aired on BBC2 in the autumn.