In The Spotlight: Chris Barcock

This month, Chris Barcock (1959-68, former staff 1980-2009) is in the spotlight:  

What did you do before you worked at BMS? 

Like many OBMs, I attended Nottingham University and thoroughly enjoyed my time there. So much so, that I recently attended a 55th anniversary lunch with my contemporaries. Old friends are generally very good if not the very best friends.

I started my teaching career at Reading Bluecoat School. Although a quiet country establishment in those days it was a great place to begin and with a very sympathetic and supportive Headmaster. It benefitted greatly from its magnificent Thames Side estate: Holme Park. In my third year there he buttonholed me one day and told me that although he valued my work at the School, I really should take my leave of it and find a ‘really good’ school to teach in!

That ‘really good school’ was Tiffin Boys’ School in Kingston upon Thames, a bustling, much more sophisticated and urbane and competitive grammar School. I had to work hard to stay in my depth after such a relatively ‘soft’ start to teaching: but I managed to do so, and to build up a more refined repertoire of School and pedagogical performance.  I was particularly proud of my crews winning at the National Schools’ Regatta and the National Rowing Championships in 1978 and 1979.

Was there someone from your time at BMS who had an impact on you? 

So, I felt as prepared as I could have been when the opportunity and, being honest, the gamble of returning to BMS presented itself. But I grasped both and was very fortunate to find a Head who was supportive and encouraging, although also a very hard taskmaster when he chose to be (and a very good thing too).

This was Peter Squire, who had recently arrived at the school to find a great deal of the Harpur Street culture both for good and, frankly, less good, had been imported into the ‘new’ School. He exerted a significant impact on me from the outset. It became rapidly obvious that of the staff who had been in service during my time as a student at the ‘old School’ the ones that I was initially cautious of: George Cullen, Robert Bratcher, Malcolm James, Roger Jones, for example, were exceptionally kind and welcoming, and subsequently became good friends. But there were others who were less so: the word ‘upstart’ was never used to my face, but it was certainly used. Others who influenced me were the legendary Gordon ‘Digger’ Roberts, whose early death was a tragedy for his family and for the School; Richard Claridge, Steve Bywater and Monica Hetherington, the leading lights of the English Department and, above all, Michael Potter, again an exacting critical friend, whose successor I eventually became when he retired in 1980. I was also very proud to launch some stellar BMS careers: Neale Else, John White, Helen Rees Bidder, to name but a few.

What would be your advice to your younger self? 

The advice to my younger self would simply be ‘don’t be in such a hurry!’ It is important to find the most effective way of achieving things but don’t risk falling flat on your face. Although it wasn’t possible at the time I would also have benefitted massively from having taken a gap year, or even years, between the ages of 18 and 22, as my younger daughter Amanda (2005-08) successfully did. They are strongly recommended.

What do you do like to do in your spare time and what else would you like to share with the OBM and BMS community? 

After BMS I developed my career as an examiner and teacher trainer for the OCR Examination Board, serving as Chief Examiner from 2012 to 2022. For the last several years I have been the external examiner of the English Language Mock Examination (thank you Tim Foster, Helen and colleagues) So I am, if only vicariously, still in close touch with the school’s pulse. And I can tell you that it is a very strong one indeed. As we hoped and foresaw when we were preparing for co-education in 2001-2003, the benefits are even more staggering than we could have anticipated at that time. Even the most reticent student in the privacy and confidentiality of the examination hall will divulge much more than they will face to face in the classroom.  The maturity, tolerance, sensitivity and intelligence that the students convey in their writing is a glowing testament to the school’s continued success.

All a far cry from 1981 when a colleague asked me to act as the witness to a beating because the boy had ‘said a rude word’!