Barry Cooke stands on a windy hillside watching the lunchtime footballers on the all-weather pitch, looking over the roofs of Hyde to the moors beyond, reflecting on his career and his imminent retirement. “I love this place,” he says. “It’s one of the best places in the world.”

To the casual observer the remark is surprising. “This place” is Hyde technology school, in Tameside LEA, and although there is a suggestion of the pastoral in its location (the railway station over the road is called Flowery Fields), there is nothing pastoral in its setting. It’s a scene Lowry might have painted. There are the same terraced houses and cobbled streets, the mills and chimneys, the gaunt and blackened church. The school itself - a jumble of undistinguished and ill-matched buildings, a square of crumbling asphalt, a handful of optimistic cherry trees - is guarded by steel railings. It isn’t beautiful; it reflects too much of the area’s post-industrial decay.

But the school is remarkable. In the past 10 years it has won a fistful of distinctions including technology college status, and praise from Ofsted, the Department for Education and Skills and the Teacher Training Agency. From a sharply disadvantaged intake (its children’s key stage 2 scores are among the UK’s lowest; 30 per cent are on free school meals), more than half its pupils get five or more good GCSEs. In the 1999 Teaching Awards , it produced the teacher of the year for ICT; the following year it won the north-west regional award for best secondary teacher.

This year it was the headteacher’s turn. Barry Cooke, already an OBE for his services to education, capped his career by winning the national award for lifetime achievement. “He has transformed his school,” the citation said, “and changed the lives of the children who attend it. He has won the trust and admiration of a whole community.”

Mr Cooke, who is nothing if not a realist, smiles wryly, and talks about the first phone call he took at school after the BBC television broadcast of the awards evening. “You may have won a bloody award,” the complainant said, “but you can’t keep your kids from smoking up our alley.”

You sense that the criticism rankles. The truth is that he’s always on the move. He’s in the corridors at every lesson change, greeting everyone who passes. And he’s out in the grounds at lunchtime, bin liner in hand, waging cheerful war on the litter, and chatting to his pupils. “Eh, come on lad,” he says as he invites a contribution, “you’re allowed to smile.”

Then he walks the bounds, past the church and the shops, down by the railway where the smokers sometimes gather, sometimes down to the town “to clock the lads who’re working on the market”. Neighbours and parents nod to him and a handful of last year’s leavers stop to tell him about their college places. Year 11 students, entitled to be out at lunch time, are greeted by name. A couple of others, flushed out of the newsagents, turn and run. He laughs. “A couple of Jack-the-lads,” he says “but there’s goodness in them. They’ll be litter-picking tomorrow.”

It’s an unselfconscious, genuine performance - testimony to the respect Mr Cooke has built up since his appointment (his first headship) in 1982. But it is inside the school that you really sense the changes.

Twenty years ago it was failing, facing amalgamation or closure. Now, with more than 1,000 pupils between 11 and 16, it is over-subscribed. New science and technology blocks are nearing completion, and a literacy centre is in the pipeline. Until then, the school is overcrowded. For all the bustle, though, the sense of purpose is palpable. The message is that everyone here can learn and can succeed. Hyde technology school, the posters say, stands for “happiness through success” - and the evidence is persuasive.

Classes are busy, often self-directing, always on task. In many, adults other than teachers - trainees (the school is in training partnership with the University of Manchester), learning assistants, parent volunteers - support the learning . There is an emphasis on creativity: many design technology projects and outstanding artwork, much of it influenced by the traditions of the school’s large Bangladeshi minority. There are hundreds of computers. In a Year 9 business studies class, four pupils have searched the net for a cottage in Limousin, and are making a presentation about the pros and cons of buying it. It earns them merit marks: if they get enough, they can win a trip to Alton Towers.

So what’s the secret? In part, perhaps, it’s money. Mr Cooke says he’ll “bid for anything, pull any strings” to win the best possible resources for his pupils. As we speak, technicians are installing a state-of-the-art interactive white board, paid for with the money that came with his national award. “If you don’t put up,” he says, “you might as well shut up.”

But mostly it’s self help, and a sense of shared commitment. A food technology room has been built and equipped by the school’s own efforts. A local architect does the drawings, (“cheaper and quicker than the LEA”) and the school’s own maintenance staff (“ditto”) does the fitting. “Staff here,” Mr Cooke says, “will do anything to help these children achieve.”

He says the area has something to do with it. “The warmth round here belies the poverty. These kids need and want to learn. If you give them time and care, they give it back with interest.” Even visitors can see the evidence of that. But he underplays his own role, all the same. “We had a lot of luck at the start. There was a lad who’d been accused of stealing a handbag. Against the evidence, I believed him. When they found the real culprit, it stood me in good stead. ‘This bloke’s on our side,’ they thought. Even so, I had a lot of convincing to do. I had to convince the staff, in that first term, just that we’d survive. Then I had to convince the parents that their kids could succeed. And then we had to convince the kids that they wanted to work. That was the crucial bit. Kids have to believe they can achieve.”

But none of that just happens. It takes a special sort of vision and a special sort of leadership: the capacity, as he says, to pick good staff, to form a happy team, to delegate without interfering. It also takes a special sort of warmth - the ability to remember 1,000 pupils by name, to join in their games and stage shows, and to stay up half the night mending bikes so that kids too poor to take a holiday can take part in the annual bike ride along the canals.

It takes stamina, too. This is a man who doesn’t even start his paperwork until the school day is over, who supports his parents and his local community (especially its Bangladeshi element) to the hilt, makes it his business to get on with its employers, and has never missed a day of school. “He’s brilliant,” one student says. “He’s funny”, says another. “He’s hands-on,” says a third. “He’s always there.”

Most of all, you suspect, it takes determination. Barry Cooke loves his job, but he loves a challenge, too. There’s a streak of Cheshire stubbornness about him that this part of Hyde recognises and responds to. He’ll tread on toes if he needs to; he will never compromise on standards.

Which probably explains his battle over litter. The school canteen is open at 8am for snacks and breakfast, and again at break, dinner time and after school. During Ramadan it provides a take-home hot meal service so pupils can break their fast as soon as it’s dusk. The canteen is a fund-raiser for the school but inevitably, given all it’s activity, it manufactures litter. As he stands by the all-weather pitch, reflecting on the future, crisp packets blow across it. “Miraj,” he calls, and holds out the bin liner. “Ten pieces, please.” Uncomplainingly, Miraj obliges.

Only reluctantly does he talk about impending retirement. “I’m planning as if I’ll be here in January.” He wants to get everything right for Denise Spence, the new head, currently a deputy in Ashton-on-Mersey. “She’s a great lass - same ideals as me, same passionate care for kids and kids’ achievement.She’ll be grand.”

But when pressed, his response is unsurprising. “Well, I’ve had a lot out of education. I’d like to give a little back. Help to develop deputies and young heads; help other schools get the boost we got here from specialist status. Most of all, help Bangladeshi youngsters to succeed. Usually, only 25 per cent of them get good GCSEs. At Hyde, it’s is 61 per cent. I’d like to build on that.”

National Teaching Awards: www.teaching awards.com

HIS STORY

1942 Born in Macclesfield, Cheshire; educated King’s School Macclesfield

1963 BSc Chemistry (Hull University)

1964 PGCE (Hull)

1973 MEd (Birmingham)

1964-68 Taught science and rugby at Rugeley grammar school, Staffordshire

1968-80 Head of year, then deputy head at Campion secondary school for boys (later Campion high school), Leamington Spa

1981 Appointed headteacher of Flowery Fields secondary school, Hyde, Tameside, which became (by amalgamation) Hyde high school in 1983, and Hyde technology school in 1993

1999 Received OBE for services to education

2001 Teacher of the Year Award for Lifetime Achievement December 2001 Retires