Gerald Haigh was discovered by the Tes around 1969, during those heady and unnerving days of student revolution. The new features editor, Virginia Makins, sifting through a teetering pile of worthy submissions about education policy, found a hilarious article about students protesting outside their secondary school, waving a banner reading “FREDOM’.

The article took the form of a series of memos from the head to his deputy, revealing how the head cunningly turns the uprising to his own advantage - incidentally correcting the spelling on the banner. “Demonstration a great success. Let’s reschedule for next year”, it concluded.

Gerald brought a welcome lighter touch to the Tes, and soon became a regular on the paper, writing prolifically for some four decades about every possible topic, from pre-school music to college management, from controversial opinion pieces to clear and helpful how-to advice - always with empathy and wit.

He excelled at getting inside the fabric of schools, bringing a depth of understanding of the teacher’s job and the head’s challenges that only comes with years of experience.

During his 28 years in schools, Gerald taught at every level, serving between 1961 and 1989 as a secondary teacher of history and English, a house head, a primary teacher and a middle school deputy and head - all in the Midlands, though his Yorkshire accent and mannerisms never faded.

He retired as head of Henry Bellairs Church of England Middle School in 1989, becoming a full-time and very busy freelance writer and consultant. He kept working until his death, aged 80, on 5 April.

In addition to his massive body of work for the Tes, Gerald wrote for a range of educational publications and bodies, latterly specialising in ICT in education, primarily for Microsoft. He published 15 books on educational management and was a school governor and an external examiner for two teacher training establishments.

Enthusiasm

As recently as May last year, he was challenging the government’s primary testing policies during Sats Week. “There are always those who believe that Sats and exams toughen up children for ‘the real world’ of heartbreak, failure, bad hair and redundancy,” he wrote.

At the Tes, Gerald could turn his hand to anything, always with enthusiasm and professionalism. Through the years he wrote features and commentary; reviews of educational books, resources and software; teaching materials and an agony uncle column; interviews and first-person expositions.

He wrote about RE and spiritual education, ICT in schools and colleges, and the burgeoning world of school management. He was always on top of the latest trends, concerns and policies, and had a talent for making a dry topic human.

So when ‘being a head’ turned into ‘school management’ in the wake of the 1988 Education Act, a typical Gerald intro provided an entertaining contrast with the brave new world: “‘I run my school with these,’ said a long-ago head, pointing to his stout brogues”.

Accomplished and passionate

Gerald Haigh was born in Tankersley South Yorkshire on March 5 1937 into a mining community, where his father was a driver at the colliery. Gerald developed his abiding love of music at Ecclesfield Grammar School, which made a point of immersing the pupils in the classics, with countless opportunities to see top orchestras and soloists at Sheffield City Hall.

Brahms’s First Symphony, he later wrote, became the theme of his life - “dark, unsettled at the start, an uplifting, glorious homeward gallop at the end”. Gerald became an extremely accomplished pianist and was passionate about music education. Over the years he taught piano and ran many children’s choirs, which he entered into the National Festival of Music for Youth, often writing and arranging his own pieces for them to perform.

He did his National Service in Singapore with the Royal Signals from 1955-1957 and, significantly, learned to touch type (as detailed in his engaging e-book, Typing for England), a skill he found vital to his own writing career and one he believed every child should learn.

Gerald trained at Saltley Teacher Training College Birmingham, later receiving a BA in Education at the Open University, an MEd at Birmingham University and a licentiate diploma in singing from the Royal Academy of Music.

He met his wife, Sheila Butler, from Darlaston, West Midlands on the Isle of Wight in 1958, when both were on a church holiday from their respective parishes. They married in 1961 and had two daughters.

Gerald Haigh (5 March, 1937 - 5 April 2017) died of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia at Myton Hospice in Coventry, surrounded by his beloved family. He leaves his wife, Sheila; his daughters, Liz Haigh and Ruth Haigh, and his two grandchildren, George and Ruby Fardon, aged 20 and 18