Dunblane High teachers must have gulped when they heard the mid- summer news that Johan Mjallby, the 6ft 2in Swedish hard man, was Lennon’s new depute. We can happily assure them that the no-nonsense Swede is to assist Neil Lennon, the new manager of Celtic, and not the no-nonsense Frank Lennon, the new caretaker manager of Dunblane High.
Frank, the distinguished head of St Modan’s High in Stirling, was sensationally transferred to the head-teacher’s office in Dunblane after the shock resignation of Dorothy White on the final day of the season.
The replacement of Dot by Frank, in the wake of the former’s poor on-field performance, and a dramatic slump in home support, was predictable. Some other premier league schools have also come to the rescue by lending their senior personnel to get Dunblane back on track.
The beautiful game, however, offers some salutary warnings against unorthodox methods of team selection which can result in the occasional own goal.
Poor form
We are steadfastly refusing to identify the teacher who will be missing from part of his school’s pre-term in-service day because of the broken wrist he sustained during the World Cup finals in South Africa. The unfortunate teacher has been excused an afternoon session of “Curriculum for Excellence Starts Here” in order to endure the slightly greater pain of having his plaster removed.
The injury followed what he said was a professional collaboration with a group of teachers from Finland who, he felt, in light of that country’s impressive showing at the top of the educational form, would provide some useful ideas for our own rather confused education system.
The pain and shock of the fracture means that the exact circumstances surrounding the early-morning accident remain as unclear as, well, Curriculum for Excellence.
The leaderate
It was good to see that the Scottish Government’s annual international summer school on school leadership last week managed to attract some top- flight speakers. Among them was Mick Waters, president of the Curriculum Foundation. In former lives, he has been a headteacher, teacher trainer and chief education officer in England.
It was very cheering to read in his biog that “Mick believes in being close to teachers, children and schools, and is often to be found in the classroom working with children”. Truly, a remarkable pedagogue.
Heap praise on Park Mains
We note that the architect for the pound;33 million rebuild of Park Mains High in Erskine is a Mr Heap. This is probably not significant.
