You have heard all about rebel-boy Mick Brookes, the new general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. Now meet the forceful but enigmatic poet Des Hamilton, the association’s new president.
“Let’s lead, not where the path may go, but where there may be no path, leaving a trail,” he declared to bemused heads in Harrogate last week.
“Get the tri back into triumph” and “the ship back into leader-ship,” he boomed, adding mysteriously: “The hinge of history is fitted to the learning door.”
And then there’s the heroic number of ways Dr Hamilton managed to interpret the conference motto: ‘Celebrating TLC’. Heads are “Totally Lacking Confidence,” he said at one point. Some feel they are being “Told Lies Continually.” A few talk cynically about “Trying Lazy Children, only because they feel Tired, Listless and Constipated!”
“Or am I,” he continued, talking a “Total Load of Sunshine?”