11 Plus Exams Forum

Has anyone heard anything about the departure of the Head of Sutton High School? Apparently he was there on Friday, vanished by Monday & all trace of him expunged from the website. A letter went out to parents which apparently does not mention health or whatever but something like 'pastures new.'

A bit Orwellian, or am I just out of touch with a new way of doing things? 'In my day' (!) Heads tended to give at least a term's - if not a year's - notice.

Hmmm...usually parents know months in advance, from my experience.

"Acting head" appeared now..

what was the previous Head's name?

huntlie wrote:Apparently he was there on Friday, vanished by Monday & all trace of him expunged from the website.

Colleagues at work had a teacher who vanished from their DDs school, picture removed from school wall, he was subject to a police investigation that lead to no charges but the damage was done by the rumour mill and he couldn't return to teaching.

That is what concerns me. With no concrete information, rumours begin.

The previous Head was Mr Stephen Callaghan.

In this case, parents only knew on Tuesday morning, by letter from the GDST and email from the school. Apparently staff only found out at a meeting on that day.

Very difficult but expect we will find out in time, I suppose meantime have to be careful not to get carried away with speculation. All sorts of reasons why he has gone. maybe he won the lottery?

I have to say that this is not a good sign but it will come out into the open eventually. You as well as I could come up with a list of possible reasons; some less troubling than others.

In some ways a clean break is the best thing. Here on Wirral Calday Grange Grammar has been in a state of turmoil for over 12 months now regarding the suspension of their Head and the never ending soap-opera of how this will be resolved (if ever!).

I do sometimes laugh at the announcements of staff leaving in termly newsletters. I recall one where 4 or 5 members of staff were leaving, and all but one received fulsome praise for their contribution to school life.

The other one received the comment (and I quote it exactly as it was written):

"Mr Jones has left the (subject) department permanently."

I sensed that the author enjoyed typing the word "permanently" very much!

I have just signed up to this website as last night my husband and I were speaking about how proud we are of our daughter. We then, as we often do, speak about how indebted we are to the GDST for giving our daughter the opportunity to study at Sutton High School. More importantly we wanted to reach out to Mr Stephen Callaghan to thank him for taking the time to listen to my life and understand why it was so important to us that our daughter was offered a place and given financial help to study there. We are a family of non academics, we are just window cleaners who only ever had one daughter because we could not afford another and had our daughter when we were 16 years old. He knew how important it was for us to help our daughter educate herself out of poverty and into bigger things. If it was not for Stephens support we doubt our daughter would have attained A*’s and A’s in all her subjects, never attended one of the best universities in the country and not be going to law school to train as a lawyer. Because of this man, our daughters life has changed forever. It’s not nice seeing the post about him on here and if he ever reads this thread I want him to know how thankful we are to him for not judging us and having faith that we will support our daughter to be the best she can possibly be, regardless of our own uneducated backgrounds. So thank you Stephen abs thank you GDST.

This thread is over 10 years old.
Stephen Callaghan left the school, later reports confirmed that there were no irregularities of any kind. He seems to have been well liked by parents, staff and pupils.
I am locking this thread now.