UPDATE: |’This isn’t how I saw my life going’ – Manchester’s most outspoken headteacher steps down News

“We’ve got to ask ourselves how much we expect teachers to do,” says headteacher Glyn Potts

As Manchester’s most outspoken headteacher Glyn Potts has become a familiar face.

On both local and national news he’s never been afraid to discuss the issues that every high school is faced with.

From the rise in knife crime to the widespread use of vapes among children, he’s never shied away from the hard-hitting reality of life in an inner city secondary.

But, with the pressure of running a school taking an increasing toll on his health, the 45-year-old is stepping down from his role as headteacher at Saint John Henry Newman RC College in Chadderton, a position he’s held since 2018 after working his way up the career ladder from his teaching assistant role at Our Lady’s Roman Catholic High School in 2003.

It’s not a decision he’s taken lightly and as I sit with him in his office just a few days before his departure on April 4, it seems he’s still getting used to the idea that he’s leaving it all behind.

But ultimately, it’s a decision he’s taken for himself and his family, including his wife Khera and their five-year-old son Joseph.

“Basically the lifestyle of being a headteacher is not consistent with being here to see my son grow up and having a long life seeing him do all the things I want to see,” he said.

After suffering a massive heart attack in 2017, caused by the flu virus travelling to his heart after a dental work, he’s since been understandably anxious about his health. The sudden deaths of a number of staff members in the last two years, as well as a pupil who was transitioning to the school from Year 6, has reinforced to him how precious life is.

“This isn’t how I saw my life going at all, but my lad is only five and I have nightmares about not being around for him,” he said.

“If every little twinge in my chest has me questioning and holding back then that means I’m not pushing and I’m not fully charged and you can’t do this job half hearted. A school has got to have someone in charge who would run through walls for the building and I just don’t feel I can.”

His time at the school has been far from easy. Built under a partnership between Oldham council and a PFI contractor owned by Balfour Beatty, as part of the national ‘Building Schools for the Future’ programme, the £32m building has been dogged by problems since day one.

In 2021 we reported how it had become the norm for pupils and staff to experience one or two incidents a week, with dozens of buckets often spread around the building because of numerous leaks.

But that’s just one element of what has made the job he loved so stressful that he’s decided to pack it in.

“Nobody goes into this job for their well-being,” said Glyn. “But seven years as a head has been tough. Of all the secondary heads that were in Oldham when I started, there are only four of us left, including me. The turnover is huge.”

Recruiting teachers ‘is just impossible’, he says. “We had a maths teacher resign yesterday as he’s got a really good job to go to doing coding. I doubt we’ll be able to recruit for that anytime soon.

“Maths, English, science and modern foreign languages are so hard to recruit to, as well as geography and history. And when there are so many vacancies, teachers can pick where they want to go. Why would they come to an area like Oldham, with more deprivation and more problems, when they could go to Didsbury or Somerset? Schools in areas of deprivation are the worst hit.”

Despite firmly believing that teaching is ‘the greatest job in the land’, Glyn says ‘we have allowed the profession to be eroded’ with little respect for the job that teachers do.

“People talk about the holidays, especially in the summer, but in reality a teacher will get three or four weeks off and the rest of the time they’re planning.

“Quite rightly there’s a higher expectation on teachers and that accountability has to stay, but we’ve got to ask ourselves how much we expect teachers to do.

“In some cases it’s become parents saying ‘he’s your problem’ and we’ve lost that parent-school partnership.

“We’re now doing so much more for children – we’re feeding them, in primary schools we’re brushing teeth and sometimes even changing nappies.”

The ‘massive gulf’ in provision for SEN children is another concern for the head, with the ‘most vulnerable in society being let down’.

And the GCSE system itself he says is flawed and setting youngsters off on the wrong path from the outset.

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“The way the results are worked out means that a third have to fail,” said Glyn, who lives in Oldham. “It’s self prophesying, these kids feel like failures and they’re now going to be given a result that confirms they’re a failure, that will affect anyone’s mental health.”

While Glyn is stepping away from education, his next role will allow him to continue playing a key role in helping young people reach their full potential.

As CEO at the Greater Manchester Youth Federation charity, he will have a hands-on job at its four centres in Gorton, Wythenshawe, Blackley and Partington.

His first task will be finding out more about what the kids want, in order to get them on board with other activities like the Duke of Edinburgh scheme, which many would previously have dismissed as ‘not for them’.

With his dad in the Army, and Glyn and his brother sent to boarding school, he knows that feeling only too well.

Referred to as ‘Potts one and Potts 2’ they were bullied by other kids for their broad Barrow accents.

“We were the Army kids and we just didn’t fit in,” he said. “Me and my brother had £10 per half term for the tuck shop, this was like 1989/1990. Other kids there had £50 to £60 a week.

“I don’t blame my mum and dad for sending us there. They did what they thought was best, but it was so awful.”

The bullying got so bad that at the age of eight, walking from the school to church, Glyn ran away.

“We were walking to church with our caps on and our socks pulled up on a Sunday and I just thought ‘no’,” he said.

Predictably, he didn’t make it far and was found and sent back to the school for punishment, which varied from corridor supper to being hit with the ruler.

It’s that childhood experience that led Glyn to taking a ‘dignified’ approach to discipline at the school, which has recently joined the Emmaus Catholic Academy Trust.

“Putting someone in isolation for a day achieves very little,” he said. “If they’ve done something wrong like dropping litter, I’d much rather work with that person to put it right and they might say ‘can I litter pick’ instead, which is a better approach.

“There’s been a headteacher in Wales in the news recently because he was holding Saturday detentions, but that’s something we’ve always done.

“If it’s a choice between a child being excluded – something that will stay on their record – or coming in school for a weekend detention, I’ve yet to have a parent turn that option down.”

As well as wanting to maximise his chances of living a longer and healthier life, Glyn, who was made an MBE in 2022 for services to education and the Army Cadet Force – where he is still a Lieutenant Colonel in the North West region – is determined to give disadvantaged young people the future they deserve and to continue speaking out on the issues that matter.

“That was part of my motivation,” he said. “There’s something about being a headteacher where I am, other than the parents, the voice piece for 1,500 people’s lives and that should be amplified. Even if it’s uncomfortable for those who are listening.

“Turning a blind eye doesn’t help anyone and I’m not going to stop chomping at the bit to get what’s right for our young people.

“We have so many of them who are unsure what they want to do with their lives and where they fit in society and we really need to help them see there’s a place for them.”