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Staff Leavers (Chris Edwards continued)
One year he rapped it; then it was Harry Potter; another Steven Gerrard arrived and he did the whole speech in Liverpuddlian. Last year he sang ‘Memory’ from ‘Cats’. What on earth did those poor speakers think as they sat there? Martin Johnson! His team talks were probably very different. Prize-Givings are staid affairs are they not? Surely no one has ever seen anything like it at a HMC Prizegiving – his style and method of delivery of the message was and will remain unique.
The Deputy Head Girl obviously likes change too: ‘Mr Edwards is an ambitiously modern Head who has helped to change the School entirely over the past 10 years taking it from its medieval approach to School life into the depths of modernism (with a hint of tradition). He has helped to try and make everyone feel at home, and gain the best opportunities that they are able to get. Everyone will miss his approach to School life, his unforgettable commemoration speeches and his excellent taste in music’.
Someone last century expressed what the School needed at the helm: ‘It only needs someone to recapture this spirit of youth and diffuse it, not with too much seriousness, but with a certain whimsicality, over his masters and boys and of a kindly autocrat who built literally and metaphorically, how they all passed on and left their successors to carry on their work, while, the school, that intangible entity that composes of a mass of ever-changing individuals, continued its life unchecked. To crystalize for all time youth in an English Public School’.
The Head Boy - ‘I would barely recognise the Bromsgrove I stepped into those same 10 years ago as Mr Edwards. I’m privileged to have played rugby using facilities fit for England, done countless experiments in brand new science labs and most of all to have been given the chance to do IB. He’s never failed to surprise us with his speeches either’. OB Meng Meng wrote to the Headmaster from St Andrews: ‘My love and gratitude for Bromsgrove has never ceased and shall continue to grow. My experience was rich and unforgettable; without it I could never have become who I am today. Sir, you are the person whom I would like to thank the most for you, kindly, first showed me the road’.
Our Deputy Head Boy wrote ‘His ability to lead the School as a whole body of pupils and yet for each individual pupil to feel that they can approach him personally reveals his skill as a Headmaster. The forward thinking nature of the School has been spearheaded by Mr Edwards, which as a pupil during that time, made me feel that he truly engaged with our aspirations and fully empathised with what is important to us as young people. I really wish him as much success in his new role as the legacy he leaves behind at Bromsgrove’.
As time goes on, posterity, looking back, is apt to judge a Headmaster by outward signs of his work. His own pupils esteem him for what he was. It is surely the more exacting test; Mr Edwards is one of the select band who can meet it.
But it needed a vision and that is not easy for us. We occupy so many markets – co-ed, local day, local boarding, British Boarding, Forces, International Boarding - we are all things to all men and women. It is a delicate balancing act to for a Head to speak to all, to meet the needs of all. We have and how. We have seized the moment during a bold headship. Chris Edwards was never going to let this School stand still or even cruise along gently. Every year has been different. He said if we stand still we die and one of his much used phrases was ‘big things are happening’.
All of us here are birds of passage. The Headmaster would be the very first to emphasise with that and to know that all play a part in creating a successful school – he has been wonderfully well served by all of you and many more. Whether management, teachers, caterers, those who maintain the grounds, run the shop - all of us can say ‘I helped build this’. But a Chief Executive has the ultimate responsibility – none of us do. He had what they call the vision thing and in abundance. So every recent head has been right for the times. So too this one. In a fast-changing world we needed to keep up with it – we did and even went beyond it. It has been a vortex of change but so too outside these walls.
If there was a literary motto for this Headship go no further than Shakespeare’s ‘Measure for Measure’ -‘Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt’. There has been a confident air, a buzz about the place, an ambition and in no small way reflected also in the change of Heads in late Summer. That is global too. So what was the difference between Chris Edwards and David Moyes? Poor old David was spotted on a plane reading ‘Good to great – why some companies make the leap – and others don’t’. It did not do him much good. Our Head knew what he wanted to do and did it. So after Brazil, Stowe, it was exactly a decade here. Chris is the first head here not to retire but to go to a headship since 1872. We congratulate our Headmaster on going on to be Head of United World Colleges of SE Asia, in Singapore – one of the world’s largest educational establishments and on the most successful island in the modern world.
That tropical state has three nicknames – the Little Red Dot (its size on a map of the world); the City in the Garden and Lion City. UWC is a group of a dozen or so worldwide Colleges and past Presidents have included Prince Charles and Nelson Mandela. It is a formidably successful global education enterprise and the two will be well matched. Mark Twain said ‘The art of prophecy is very difficult, especially about the future’ but another very successful period of leadership dawns. They are certainly in for change. But we know that Bromsgrove School will always have a special place in his heart. Godspeed in your move and travels. We wish you every success, happiness and above all fulfilment in Singapore. You will be greatly missed, never forgotten and will readily bring a smile when recalled. We shall not see your like again – such a flamboyant, innovative Headship which took our School a mighty leap forward but also preserved its mighty beating heart. So on behalf of staff, for all you have done for this School – we close with Shakespeare – ‘A thousand thanks’. P Bowen
SENIOR BROMSGROVIAN 2014
www.bromsgrove-school.co.uk
But there was another side to our Headmaster. The leather jacket, the shades, the Elvis impersonations at ‘Pop and Jazz’, a brilliant, natural performer. Wit abounded – in his almost Private Eye columns in ‘Conference and Common Room’, Heads must have turned in their graves; the blogs to parents; and of course Commemoration which often seemed like a cabaret turn writ large too.
There was always a youthful air about both our Headmaster and his outlook on life. There was the radical student within too. He readily identified with the young and their culture. There was a Commemoration when he recalled sitting in a pub in Oxford over hearing a teenage girl conversation with the accents of course. One of our pupils at the Ball that night said ‘Sir he is a real expert on us’. His innovation of asking senior pupils to speak at Prep and Pre-Prep Prizegivings was a master-stroke.
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