So there it was. 2007. A decision to stop! To make a life change. After 20 years in charge of schools and many more as part of school senior teams, enough was enough.

Everyone said “You won’t be able to stop…” I thought I knew differently. I was wrong. It took another seven years to start to stop!

So I thought I might write up the story. A book might be a bit presumptuous so perhaps a personal record and reflection might be better.  Something that captured my learning, my mistakes so that others might also enjoy the fun and the challenges, the achievement and disappointments. I wanted it to be more than just a personal summary but more a reflection of how we run education and  the inherent values and principles we should live.

Ironically, I have been so busy since the decision to stop, this monologue has only moved to be jottings in a moleskin book. So this is a way of making it happen. 

I trust it won’t be too self-indulgent, but it has been and still is a rich and varied working life. I have been privileged to work with and meet some amazing people, be supported by an incredible family and be surprised every day by brilliant young people. So firstly thanks to all of you.

No! This is not me but the buildings behind are still a part of the present grammar school I attended. It was somewhere we were worked hard to  be a part of. And yet I have to say I have very few positive memories of the school or the education I received there. Undoubtedly, some of my peers were academically very successful and followed glowing careers after university places. Also looking at the school’s website today it seems a very different place to the one I remember.

It had all those elements typical of grammar and the public school sector in the sixties. It is interesting visiting schools in Pretoria South Africa, where the great schools there not only mimic these elements but even go further back to the traditions of  public schools in the early 20th century.

We had all of those elements: streaming, corporal punishment, gowns, prefects, a knowledge based curriculum, cross-country and cadets. Our curriculum was limited compared to schools today; there was absolutely no  technology. I never saw a workshop bench or  a bit of wood let alone anything vaguely technological.

Bullying was almost institutional. Looking back, we never thought of it as bullying  -just a part of the culture of the place  – part of what you experience as a maturing school boy. Of course, I can remember individual boys I avoided, but that is probably little different from now. But I say institutional, because as a young student I was more worried by the prefects and the teachers. The former handed out arbitrary punishments and detentions; they were responsible for the behaviour at lunch and breaks so had plenty of opportunity to deal with the younger students.

Teachers were renowned for their stylised punishments – side-burn-lifts, rubber at the nape of the neck, ink bottle on the nose, cheek pulling, chalk and board rubber throwing and general corporal punishments. They delighted in nicknames – Snoddy, Banger, Killer, Laddie, Mowgli and Tilly.

Let’s take Tilly Turpin as an example of such a character; he’d been there for ages and was one who had taught my father. He was infamous for taking snuff in lessons; he dressed very dandily – immaculate waistcoats and matching handkerchief in top pocket .

He loved his subject and particular phases of History. I remember the year 2 curriculum revolving around the Pilgrimage of Grace. As Henry VIII was dissolving the monasteries and creating the Church of England there was a group of rebellious priests and catholic nobility in this area who objected to the process and the Lincolnshire rebellion led by people like Baron John Hussey was the local part of that. Hussey Tower below was in the school grounds.

It would be good educational thinking to build the curriculum around such  rich resource, particularly given the  links to Tudor England and its changes and successes. Lots of opportunity for 13-year-old boys to be enthused and interested. However in our case History lessons became a day-by-day dictation of the events of the Pilgrimage. We would sit lesson by lesson writing and ruling in our books as Tilly paraded up and down the rows of the class. Whilst in full flow he would stop behind one poor unsuspecting boy, and for no apparent reason, take his ink bottle and screw the inky top on the student’s nose.

At the end of the third form (year 9 nowadays), we were expected to join the CCF cadet force. But to my parents credit, they supported by conscientious objection. This must have been hard and disappointing for father who himself was Lance Bombardier when there in the 40s. I was told it showed I was missing out on taking responsibilities and I suspect my objection was never forgotten. This did however, give me early encouragement to voice and fight for the values I was just starting to clarify as important to me.

Every young person should have the right and be encouraged to unfettered radical thinking. My early political thinking led me to the Young Liberals, then regarded as a very active and anti establishment group. I remember attending the Young Liberal Conference in Scarborough in 1968 with a very young David Steele speaking , then the youngest member of parliament. I had a lapel of badges hidden away with slogans like “We want a Revolution” It had encourage me to choose Economics and International Affairs as an A-level; not in the end a good choice.

It was the time of the Vietnam War and I read widely and easily joined the anti-war fraternity. If I think back it was this period that got me thinking not of joining the family grocery business, but to go into education. How else could you create a utopian and peaceful society. I honed my political views to a moral purpose strongly influenced by my faith. I discovered my voice, opinions and a radical agenda.

It is hard to see how all this added up to me, but somehow – perhaps by coincidence, perhaps by design, it steered by career path and gave me  resilience and determination. Trust, care and support from home, and then a traditional schooling which gave me an expectation of academic achievement but a with a determination to build something better. And I’m sure this taking place in the sixties with its open debate and youth culture gave permission to all this. Whatever it was, positive or negative, it started me on this path!

Let’s take the ‘trust thing’.  To be able to develop higher level thinking and to take risks,  you need to be sure that the consequence of failure does not lead to punishment and humiliation. There has to be tacit permission that to experiment is fine. But you have to be given the authority and responsibility  in the first place. I had no problem there. From as early as I can remember I worked in my parents and grandparents shop. I was for example given responsibility for doing window displays and expected just to do it! I was expected to take the post bike and do the rounds when necessary. When old enough to drive I’d take the shop van and complete one of the rounds around the Lincolnshire countryside.

Sadly much of educational development in the UK over the last few decades has been to create a climate where taking a chance, doing something different is really a risk too far. Fortunately we have a whole cadre of maverick and principled headteachers around who do not restrict their staff and students .

To give you an example, I sat listening to a very successful headteacher recently who  espousing uniform as the basis for a calm school. “If you draw the line here then other more challenging behavioural issues disappear quickly” I have heard myself saying this in the past. But there are a whole group of schools in other countries that are perfectly calm and where no uniform exists.

When I worked as a head in Sweden, it was a relief not to have the constant  debate about uniform rules – “What are the right trousers for girls to wear?” Spending the start of the school day at the entrance saying ” Ear-ring! Hat! Tie!” However positively you say that, it is about creating a type of climate in the school. It’s like wearing the gown to assembly. It’s about being called sir! It’s about students standing up as you walk in the room. I did all that!

But rather than creating these ‘bottom lines’,  and a point of disagreement could we create a school where the total focus is on learning and we only bother about those things. If dress is getting in the way of learning, then address it! Can we build trust in students and put the effort into dealing with the problems rather than the whole community. Might this be a happier and more conducive environment for learning.

But perhaps the greatest risk of all would be to trust students to design their own pathway to reach their goals. Many of our best teachers are that because they are super-organised and lessons are meticulously planned. They plan the journey of their students to a successful conclusion. Students trust the teachers to do that rather than teachers trusting students. Guy Claxton talks much about developing learnacy and sees this as being just as important as literacy and numeracy. He gives the example of a high achieving girl, who at 16 is saying ” I really worry about leaving school; people will stop asking me questions and telling me what to do next. How will I cope? “

We need to co-construct our learning with students. That was an alien concept in my schooling and a challenge in today’s classrooms. Not only was the decision about learning the teachers preserve, it was in many cases structured by a text-book. We have moved far from this in many schools today. But we need to trust our students more. Very few of them do not want to achieve and giving them some ownership of the journey would make a big difference.

This is not abrogation. If you give them that responsibility and ownership you have to put your effort into helping them and in some cases driving them to reach their goals. As one of my Kunskapsskolan colleagues in Sweden said to me ” I am not bothered how they work or achieve things, only that they do meet or exceed their goals. That is the one thing that is not up for discussion. “

Many of my friends did really well at Boston Grammar. I actually won the prize for the best O levels. The prize was quite a substantial amount for books; interestingly I was not allowed to choose the books just make suggestions. But were we prepared for the world to come. Well to some extent yes – it was a laissez-faire approach that if you had enough academic drive and ability saw you through without too much control. Our teachers loved their subjects and that rubbed off. But only 50% of the boys who were themselves 25% of the whole population, were successful in going onto post 16 and universities. We now have huge success in comparison across a whole comprehensive intake to our schools. But how may really have got there through their own endeavour, with the skills and resilience to be successful in the 21st century. You know when you are in schools that do that. The climate and involvement of students is transparent. Even heads need a climate of trust and a chance to try something different!