The College of Teachers has elected Professor Alma Harris as president, taking over from Professor Geoff Whitty, president since 2004 and director of London University’s Institute of Education. Professor Harris, who first trained as a secondary school teacher, is pro-director for leadership development and professor of educational leadership at the institute. Her specialities are leadership and school transformation, organisation development and educational policy and change.
Professor Derek Bell has been appointed head of education at the Wellcome Trust, the world’s largest medical research charity, following six and a half years as chief executive of the Association for Science Education. Professor Bell has previously taught science, environmental studies and PE in schools, with a continuing career at Liverpool Hope University College and Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln. “This is an important and exciting time for science and I am looking forward to the challenges,” he said.
Sarah Fletcher, deputy head of Rugby School, in Warwickshire, is to take up the headship of Kingston Grammar, in Surrey, in September. Mrs Fletcher will succeed Duncan Baxter to become the first female head of the school. With a first-class honours degree from Oxford, she has taught at both day and boarding schools and has been at the forefront of the development of the pre-U initiative.
Sean Heslop has been recruited to run Folkestone Academy in Kent from September.
He has left his post at Tiffin School in Kingston upon Thames, where Pauline Cox, head of neighbouring Girls’ School, has taken over temporarily.
Mr Heslop was appointed head in 2004 and once ran a BBC Question Time-style evening with parents, expressing his intentions for the school: to inspire learning, to raise GCSE performance, and to start the school day earlier.
The headship of Headlands School in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, is to be filled by Scott Ratheram, the deputy. Mr Ratherham, formerly a senior leader at South Hunsley School at Melton, has recently acted as director for the partnership between the two schools. Headlands School is in special measures, but the most recent Ofsted inspection, in November, judged its progress as satisfactory. Mr Ratherham’s appointment follows the resignation of Dr Steve Rogers, who had been off work because of an illness before Christmas.
David Whyley, a former primary head of Stow Heath Junior School in Willenhall, West Midlands, has taken up the role of information technology consultant for Wolverhampton City Council. Mr Whyley has associate status with Becta, the government IT agency, and has contributed to the primary national strategy leadership team toolkit and National College for School Leadership online tools. He is also a Naace IT mark assessor.
Isabel Nisbet
As newly appointed acting chief executive of Ofqual, the exams regulator, Ms Nisbet will have to uphold the highest standards of honesty. The good news is that she has never had much time for the art of spin. In the 1970s, as a civil servant, Ms Nisbet was deputed to write commentaries that portrayed unemployment figures in a more positive light. Having crafted one such dispatch, she forwarded it to her bosses with a note. “This is a load of crap,” she wrote.
