In The Spotlight: Rob Haworth

This month, former staff member Rob Haworth (1974-90) is in the spotlight.
 

I first visited BMS briefly in November 1973 in order to arrange my PGCE teaching practice at the school. The previous summer I had graduated in Economics and was so desperate not to leave Cambridge, I realised the only way I could extend my stay was to train to be a teacher. I therefore joined the school in its final term in the Harpur Centre. I was invited to share a house for the term by Messrs Birch and Nicholson, who remain friends, and I had a ball. Towards the end of the term I was offered a full-time post teaching Economics and Georgraphy: serendipity at work. I stayed until December 1990.

I settled in to the school very quickly and found the common room, aka the BMS gentlemen’s club, very friendly, very helpful, very comfortable. I enjoyed many great friendships and had no enemies. Many of these friends had a significant influence on my life…still do in many ways. John Hale showed me how to play squash; 10 years later I was winning more games than losing against him. Andy Curtis, who was HoD, helped me in so many ways, not the least of which was what he taught me about coaching cricket. He was also firm yet kind when I needed pointing in the right direction. Richard Ledger encouraged me to get involved in establishing football at the school, not easy since traditionally it was seen as ‘not the sort of thing we encourage here’. By December 1990 it was a well established Lent term sport for the older boys. For a time in the late 70s I was House Tutor in School House and enjoyed and gained much in conversation with Dick Claridge…insightful, learned and a devilish sense of humour. During the rest of my time RBC was always available when I needed someone to talk to…as was Chris Barcock.

I remember playing regularly for the Woodpeckers, the staff cricket team, and a particularly alcoholic trip to play Kimbolton staff, such wonderful hosts, and bawdy singing on the return journey in the school coach driven by John Franks. As a singer, I remember being introduced to many major choral works performed by the Musical Society under the baton of Fred Rawlings, John Moseley and Clive Simmonds. It was Clive who encouraged me to bring my general studies singing group to perform in the Christmas concerts. I remember several football tours to my old hunting ground in the north-west and giving some long established soccer schools a run for their money, albeit most often in defeat. One of most adventurous tours was to Normandy; little did we know that In Riva Bella the English were still regarded as liberators and our host, Monsieur Lair, a former member of the local resistance, insisted that we visit their WWII headquarters in the secret cellar of a local farmhouse and every Commonwealth cemetery in the area. It was here that RL went into panic mode as at kick off time of our second match we were still stood quietly to attention amongst the graves reciting poems and prayers at the command of the formidable M. Lair. Football reached a zenith in 1989 when the 1st XI entered the Canary Cup in Norwich and won the competition in the final at Carrow Road against a team from Finland.

I am grateful to the senior management of BMS, Peter Squire and Michael Potter at the time, who had the confidence in me to gain a senior pastoral position as a head of year and 6th form tutor, financed a pastoral  course in Swansea with the then pastoral guru, CB Hamlin, and a 2 year course at the Cambridge Institute of Education to complete an Advanced Diploma. It was this experience that encouraged me to seek my fortune elsewhere and I was successful in my application to be the Deputy Head of Hull Grammar, an independent co-educational school in the East Riding. It is complicated story but I arrived in Hull in January 1991 as the head, designate of the school. Then in September 2005 the school merged with Hull High School for girls on the HHS site, was renamed Hull Collegiate School, and I remained the head there until I retired in August 2014.

I did enjoy 23 years of headship and even now sorely miss the sense of community and camaraderie that schools facilitate. But school leadership is very wearing, at times very stressful and yet profoundly rewarding. I now spend time as a governor at two local primary schools, sing in two choirs, and over the past 8 years I have supported and advised two young Sudanese asylum seekers; both left terrible situations at home and are now peacefully settled here as British citizens. I do all I can to support my wife Allison (who I met through her brother, an OBM), my 3 children, all teachers married to teachers, and my 4 grandchildren. I remain a season ticket holder at Bolton Wanderers - a 4 hour round trip - and enjoy being a daft supporter for 90 minutes once a fortnight.

I remain happy with my lot. My only advice to my younger self would be to have taken up an orchestral instrument instead of or even in addition to the piano; to be a member of an orchestra playing Brahms 4 is my idea of heaven