A TALE OF TWO HEADS Sundays in a children's home taking children out for walks and trying to do something for people who were underprivileged, and I was always keenly involved in the life of the school. I was at a traditional day grammar school in Hertfordshire, where I was a school prefect, and I acted in plays, played music and so forth. I've not regretted going into teaching; if anything, I've regretted not having some other experience out of teaching to enrich me. However, one of the good things about being in Edinburgh was the way as a city school we had strong links with various organisations and activities within the city. So I got very actively involved in things of a noneducational nature. What did you find most rewarding about your job at the Edinburgh Academy? I went to a school where there had never been a Deputy Rector before. What they needed was someone who could come in and help the school run more efficiently. That makes me sound like a boring bureaucrat in a striped shirt — not at all: it was a personnel-type appointment, so I had a number of responsibilities which I undertook to support the Head. Many of the things I started doing were new creations of mine — smoothing the transition from our junior school to our senior school, making better use of shared resources between the two schools, and public relations, trying to make the public face of the school very different. There had been a problem of discipline: it was a big city day school with a small number of boarders, but it was quite rough-and-tumble. I worked very hard to make them behave in a civilised manner — that's something I enjoyed. The thing I liked most about it was that the job I was doing didn't stay still. I was always doing something different. My last year there coincided with our junior Head leaving us, so I took over the junior school for one year. I enjoyed that, too.
What did you do before coming to St. Peter's? I read English Language and Literature at Balliol College, Oxford. Then I completed my Cert.Ed. at the Oxford University Department of Education, where I did my teaching practice at a very lively and thriving Comprehensive on the outskirts of Oxford. I started my first teaching job in 1978 at Radley College. I was there for six years, teaching English, coaching rugby and rowing — I ended up coaching the First VHI for two years — and running the naval section of the C.C.F. I lived in a boarding house for three of those six years, and then we moved to Abingdon School, a close neighbour but with a very different setting, in the sense that Radley was a self-contained campus boarding school, whereas Abingdon was predominantly a day school with a small boarding component. I was there for six years, in a very active English Department, running a day house, as well as taking over the Boat Club for a year, coaching the first XV, playing music and singing in the choir; and then in 19911 went to me Edinburgh Academy as Deputy Rector.
Was there a point at which you decided that you would like to become a Headmaster, or did it just evolve? I had thought about it quite seriously. I think that many of the jobs I was doing as Deputy Rector would have been done by Heads in many other schools, so I had a good insight. One of the things I was contracted to do was to see one Rector in and the other one out — a kind of interregnum — and I felt that that job had gone well. I don't think I was bursting with ambition, but I wanted to be a Head from my first few years in teaching.
What attracted you to a career in education? My father was an Art teacher, who went on to be a Deputy Head and later Head of a primary school. My mother was a music teacher. My brother is Deputy Head at The Leys School in Cambridge. My sister was a teacher before having a complete change of career. I thought about other career options, such as graduate entry into the Metropolitan Police, but I always wanted to teach: when I was in the fifth and sixth form at school, I used to spend
A Headmaster's job has many different functions and aspects. What are your priorities likely to be? I'm very much a person who works with people: I like to have the company of pupils, and I like to have the company of my colleagues. I will be someone who will be seen about the school. I won't be a Headteacher who is behind a desk. I like the idea of looking for the school's 34
