You always remember your headteacher, don’t you?
Few people are in such a position to shape young lives. They are teachers, mentors, guides, advisers, and early authority figures tasked with keeping their young charges on the straight and narrow. A visit to the head’s office is not necessarily an encounter to look forward to.
The nature of their leadership influences the culture and success of the school, and its reputation rests on their shoulders.
An enormously responsible role, then. In this selection we remember just a handful of the special individuals who have been the figureheads of Shropshire schools big and small down the years.
Missed our Shropshire in 1974 gallery? You can view it here.
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1. Goodbye and Thank You, Sir
Mr E Alan Youatt will be familiar to generations of older Whitchurch folk, as he was a head in the town from 1946 to 1972. This is a presentation to him by pupils on his retirement at Sir John Talbot's Grammar School. The gift is still under wraps, but looks like a framed picture, but of what? According to the internet recollections of a pupil at the then Whitchurch Grammar Boarding School from 1956 to 1960 Mr Youatt was called "Tate." | Shropshire Star archive
2. Ready for Shrewsbury School speech day
Alderman Mrs Edith Parsonage, Mayor of Shrewsbury, and Shrewsbury School head Donald Wright, at the school speech day in June 1971. The prizes were presented by former headmaster Sir John Wolfenden | Shropshire Star archive
3. New centre was named after first head
In October 1986 a former headmaster of Prestfelde School, Shrewsbury, the Rev Edward Young, opened the new £140,000 administration and teaching block at the school. The Dovey Centre was named after the first headmaster, the Rev Kendal Dovey | Shropshire Star archive
4. Meet the new VP
Okay, he isn't actually a head, but we're not going to split hairs. This is Graham Smith who in 1972 had been appointed to the new post of vice-principal of Walker Technical College, Wellington. He had been head of the college’s general studies department, and in 1971 was adviser to television company ATV in a pioneer education television series aimed at helping slow learners - not a phrase you often hear nowadays - between seven and nine years old. The college would later become Telford College of Arts and Technology | Shropshire Star archive