Kingsbridge Community College's Ian Jamison has won the Guardian Award for Teacher of the Year in a Secondary School 2007.

The religious teacher stepped up to receive his coveted accolade on Sunday evening in front of an audience of nearly 2,000 at the London Palladium.

The ceremony, screened on BBC2, was hosted by Jeremy Vine and former X-Factor presenter Kate Thornton.

Since arriving at Kingsbridge, Ian has shaken the religious studies department upside down. He has brought into school representatives from faiths as far apart as Pagans and the Church Army, taken a group of sixth formers to India to study Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism, and led an expedition up a local moorland, when students were studying the concept of pilgrimage. He has fundamentally remodelled the curriculum, and his GCSE students somehow manage to get through their course in half the usual time, and still do well.

Ian is a teacher of unusual appearance and unusual approaches. His personal experience of Hinduism, and deep love of Eastern and Western music, means that he brings a personal perspective to what he teaches, but what pupils respond to are his challenging lessons, his respect for them as individuals, and the way he makes them all feel they can achieve.

He is also sensitive in how he approaches his subject. Students point out that he did not mark a recent Year Nine project on the Holocaust, feeling it was inappropriate to give marks for such a subject. Yet he is also tough. His classroom is crammed with posters, artefacts and challenging questions, and pupils have to pay attention. If their mobile phone goes off during a lesson, they have to stand on a model of an elephant at the front of the room! "You would never not hand work in," says one student. "He makes you want to do it for you."

Ian has studied co-operative learning techniques in the US, and introduced them to Kingsbridge where they have had a big impact on the school.

He also uses brain-based teaching techniques, and runs an interactive website where pupils can get homework help and ask him questions. For his A level students he runs an intensive cramming weekend at his own home.

Ian is also a sixth form tutor, runs the in-service training schedule for colleagues at school, and has written a well-regarded A level textbook.

The Teaching Awards judges believe his innovative and thoughtful approaches to teaching could have an influence far beyond his immediate school. "He could be fundamental in inspiring, challenging and motivating a whole range of teachers and learners in the future," they said.

The Teaching Awards are managed by the Teaching Awards Trust, an independent UK charity.