President Joan – reflections of a life in education
My professional background is in education and management originally penetrating as painlessly as possible what was regarded as mostly a man’s world, co-educational secondary school headship. A woman in charge of men and boys! Whatever next.
I was born, brought up &‘schooled’ in Surrey and trained in Cambridge, a brilliant experience which amongst other matters confirmed my choice of career in education although was a touch depressing about the prospects of headship if I insisted on secondary co-education! Following various senior posts in Surrey, Dorset & Somerset I moved to Hampshire, an enlightened education authority, which gave me first headship, a new co-educational secondary modern school serving an area of what was then regarded as the largest council estate in Europe. Unemployment, social and educational deprivation was rife. Those in work tended to believe their success was in spite of their education rather than because of it! It would be fair to suggest this first headship was the best of the last of a particular type of school, mostly emulating the old grammar school tradition focusing on the absorption of facts, passing examinations & doing things at children rather than with them!
Five years later I was seconded to the then Department of Education & Science to work on preparations for raising the school leaving age from 15 to 16. This brought the huge privilege of visiting schools all over the British Isles & occasionally further a field endeavouring to identify what enabled some schools to be more successful than others in educating teenagers. This job resulted in a personal educational life changing experience! Of course what is taught is important and indeed how but it became increasingly clear that ethos, and the quality of relationships between teacher and taught especially in social priority areas was even more crucial than originally believed. ‘Doing at’ needed to be changed to ‘doing with.’ Interestingly at least 90% of significant schools were run by women, single sex and co-educational. Women were doing it differently and with considerable success.
Rather than continue beyond the three-year secondment I returned to the chalk face and opened Hampshire’s first purpose built comprehensive school serving a different area of the same council estate. So began a period of challenging existing orthodoxy trying to create a school where all young people wanted to be, which parents would support & have confidence in & which would be full of second chances. Others can testify to success. Suffice it to record that public examination results were above average, the curriculum was full and attendance levels in 9 years never dropped below 95%. Not surprisingly perhaps I despair about much of what appears currently to pass for education, preoccupation with league tables, examination results, & national curriculum over load. We are increasingly in danger of forgetting what education should be about which is far from most media led definitions. Relationships feature again only this time in the context of society and teachers & schools learning to trust each other so that amongst other things the pressure for external assessments diminishes.
Head hunting led to a third leadership post, Principal of a Community College in Leicestershire charged with the task of leading the college as gently as possible into the realities of the 21st century.
Despite these challenges I still found time to develop other interests ranging from cars, classical music, Hi-Fi, books, pictures, furniture, sport, gambling counters, Siamese cats and foreign travel.
In ‘retirement’ my passion for education has not diminished so I persuaded the club in its 76th year to focus and reflect on education and what it ought to be about - and we should be worried placed as we are 24th out of 29 countries in the welfare of children stakes, education being one of the factors included.
President Joan Gregory, Soroptimist International Leicester