RESUMABLY
his family's interest in the teaching
profession and the influence of Mr Dickinson, his old headmaster,
had inclined him to take that path. He took a job at Liverpool
Collegiate School as assistant master and stayed for three years
learning the job at first hand. There is no record of his having
any formal teacher training, though he may have taken short
vacation courses.
After three years he had had enough of the Liverpool experience which, according to his family, he did not enjoy. He decided to get some first-hand experience at a top-class public school. With some experience under his belt and his recently conferred MA, he applied successfully to Taunton School where he spent five profitable years in congenial surroundings discovering how the public school system worked. There is almost no information in the school archives apart from the information that he gave about his previous academic and war service record. You can see something of Taunton School today at www.tauntonschool.com , but again, nothing much from the 1920s.
It is said by his family that he was involved with school dramatics at Taunton and it was in this context that he met his future wife Dorothy Saunders. At some point he must have decided a career move was necessary. We shall never know what appointments he sought for his next position but we know that in late 1929 or early 1930 he applied for the job of headmaster at Lewes County School (as it was originally called) and was successful. He married in 1930 and moved to Lewes where he had a brand new grammar school in which to develop his ideas. He was 34.
The fact that he applied for the post of headmaster at Lewes is a clear indication that he had decided not to stay in the public school system, much as he approved of the ethos, curriculum and standards. His destiny was not there. He had decided that he wanted to return to his roots and emulate his old headmaster by giving the best education possible to boys who came from a background similar to his own. This, I believe, is the key to understanding our old headmaster.
Few if any of us realised that he had made his way to success from humble beginnings without any of the privileges that wealth and position can confer. He struggled and fought his way through many difficulties and felt it was his destiny to bring the same opportunities to other boys in a similar situation. Now we know -
HE WAS A GRAMMAR SCHOOL BOY AT HEART - ONE OF US !