Talking heads: The best of schools, the worst of schools

As careers for Oxford Union-debating PPE graduates go, Shaun Fenton’s has not been wholly orthodox. Leaving Keble College in 1992, he took up a job with what is now Deloitte and trained as a chartered accountant. So far, so ordinary. But it was on a trip back to his old school, Haberdashers’ Askes’ in Elstree, to see his former mentor David Lindsay that he had his epiphany: ‘I told him that I felt I was helping companies, but I wasn’t being me.’ He thought of teaching as an option, and decided to move from a job about ‘effective economics’ to one about ‘authentic relationships’. He adds: ‘I loved it, and never looked back.’

A few years into teaching at a comprehensive in west London, Fenton spotted his vocation on BBC Panorama. It was 1996, and the Ridings School in Halifax had been infamously dubbed the ‘worst school in Britain’. He promptly applied for a job there. ‘The head there was a chap called Peter Clark, and I absolutely believed the vision he was presenting. If you are relentless about providing the right educational opportunities for children, and you have a “no excuses” culture to meet their needs then everything else falls into place.’ It was hard work, with Ofsted popping in every six weeks. ‘It was about five years of professional experience in two years,’ recalls Fenton.

Over the last 20 years, he has worked at almost every type of mainstream school, going on to become headmaster of a state grammar, an academy, and a state comprehensive. In 2006 he took over as head at Pate’s Grammar, one of the UK’s highest performing schools (ranked ninth by the Sunday Times last August) before arriving at Reigate Grammar School five years ago.