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TONY BIRD RETIRES BERNARD TRAFFORD
TONY BIRD RETIRES
BY BERNARD TRAFFORD RGS HEADMASTER (08-17)
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Not many people know this, but I first met Tony Bird in 1998, when I arrived at the RGS as part of a team from the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI).
James Miller (94-08) was in his fifth year as Headmaster and, reflecting the subjects I was allocated to inspect, I got to know Kevin (76-13) and Christine Egan-Fowler in Art, the late Howard Baker (77-12) in RS and Philosophy – and Tony, then Director of Music, running a very effective department in a hard-to-love building long since demolished to make way for the magnificent PAC where music now lives.
In 1999, Tony was appointed Director of Studies, a senior whole-school role, as a result of which he and I found ourselves thrown together regularly as elected representatives for the independent sector on the National Council of our union, ASCL (the Association of School and College Leaders – though then it was still called SHA, Secondary Heads’ Association).
None of those people mentioned above, let alone Tony or me, could have dreamed in 1998 that we’d end up working together: but we did when I joined the School as James’s successor in 2008.
By then, Tony had progressed to the post of Second Master (nowadays Deputy Head), on the retirement of John Armstrong (72-03). Tony was the kind of well-established, calm and absolutely knowledgeable (no, omniscient!) deputy on whom new heads must rely absolutely, and must know that they can. Someone, after all, has periodically to ask of overeager new heads the perennial question immortalised by Dad’s Army’s Sergeant
Wilson: “Do you think that’s wise?”
Tony was also heavily invested in the RGS in a personal/family sense: his youngest daughter, Frances (10-19), was about to join the Junior School, son Jonathan (05-15) to move up to the Senior School and elder daughter Katy (07-12) to progress post-GCSE into the Sixth Form (she was a great Head Girl, a year later).
I loved more things than I can list about my nine years leading the RGS. Chief among them, though, was working closely with the amazing people who comprised my senior team in that time, above all forming a triumvirate with Tony and legendary Bursar, Richard Metcalfe (99-16).
Tony’s vision and quiet determination were crucial in our joint work to embed coeducation fully in the school: to plan a programme of building for the future (that particular plan was fulfilled with the completion of the new building and enlarged Sixth Form in 2019-20); above all, endeavouring constantly to perpetuate and spread excellence, good management and effective communication in order not only to retain and raise the School’s profile and standing but also (and most important) to make it an ever more wonderful, happy and fulfilling place for students and staff alike.
Members of the school council will remember Tony’s tireless work, as will those to whom he taught many subjects beyond his specialism over the years. All will remember his warm and personal assembly talks. His kindness and unstinting support will long be valued by the new teachers whose induction he supervised, and all colleagues will know how much he cared for them by ensuring that the appraisal process that he evolved over the years always ended by focusing on their development and needs.
He was almost unflappable and unfailingly patient, his belief in finding and building on the good in colleagues and students driven by his deep personal faith and generosity of spirit.
In the last of his 30 years at the RGS, he stepped aside from his deputy role and ran the school’s outreach, being a moral, far more than a political one. It was typical of Tony that he could help to identify that need, and then set to work to address it.
Great schools need loyal servants who are prepared to do the long haul. Tony was one such – the finest possible example, indeed. All of us wish him and his wife Alison a long, happy and richly deserved retirement.
