Focus on Education October 2022
I have been reflecting on the departure of Year 13 in the light of A Level Exams results day last month, as they move onto University and/or the world of work.
I left School once.
It was 1988 and perhaps the only thing upon which my teachers and I agreed was that it was time for me to go. Their collective lack of enthusiasm for the world depressed me. The staffroom oozed equal parts stale cigarette smoke and jaundiced sarcasm. Many of its inhabitants were already in mourning for the looming ban on corporal punishment (which sadly did not arrive in time to prevent some of my friends becoming acquainted with the cane of our Headmaster, a former Tennis champion who still had the forehand to prove it).
I probably deserved it; I was no angel. However, they mistook my boredom for a lack of ambition. “Simon will succeed in spite of himself” bemoaned one of my teachers on my final report. My English teacher always looked crestfallen when I arrived at the classroom door, upsetting an otherwise pristine and acquiescent row of students all eagerly thumbing their copies of ‘Jane Eyre’. If I was uninspired, it was at least in part because mediocrity and preserving the status quo were the order of the day.
Hence the spring in my step as I made the trek to the Careers Advisor’s office in those final months, proudly handing over my five-page, handwritten application to become an Air Traffic Controller. The counsellor was a tie-dyed refugee from the hippie Sixties, eccentric or enlightened (possibly both) and about as out-of-place in that School as I felt. Studiously, he read all about my enthusiasm for sitting in a darkened room looking at blips on a radar screen for the rest of my life. Then calmly proceeded to tear each page into small pieces. This was 1988, remember. No photocopiers in schools back then. The only copy of my ticket to the future was shredded to confetti before my eyes.
Instead, the bearded one slid a University prospectus about Teaching across the desk. It sat there between us like some cosmic joke. Akin to offering Nelson Mandela a chance to buy a holiday home on Robben Island on the day of his release. I am still not quite sure what happened next. Perhaps I had spent too long in my English class and some of the biddability had rubbed off on me. Or perhaps my teenage addiction to John le Carre spy novels got me thinking I could go undercover as a double-agent and bring down the system from within. Either way, rather than run screaming from the room, I took the prospectus. The next year, I effectively went back to school.
Thirty-four years later, and I have never left.
Nor once regretted that decision. Indeed, the highlight of those decades has been the ten years I have spent at HGS. Never have I known such a deep sense of privilege, nor been delivered daily so many moments that uplift me. The colleagues with whom I work are not just teachers, they are educators in the truest sense of the word. The students, simply inspiring.
As a consequence, I remain convinced that the so-called ‘Imposter Syndrome’ was coined in my honour. I still wake up most mornings expecting this will be the day that the Governors finally twig to the fact that they have handed stewardship of this illustrious institution to me by mistake, whose own schooling was lack lustre at best. How I got here remains a mystery to me; perhaps my teacher was right after all?
What I do know is that every day I have spent at HGS has brought fresh cause for gratitude. Maybe the biggest of my debts is owed to that long-haired, counter-culture counsellor, who once saw something I could not yet see in myself.
Be open-minded and be prepared to take a path less travelled than others might – you never know where it could lead you. At 18 I never thought I would be the Headmaster of Birmingham’s oldest Grammar School and be extremely proud, grateful and happy to be so! Food for thought.
Stay well and safe.
Be kind to yourself and others.
Best wishes,
Dr Bird
