Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” as Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, headteacher of Anderton Park Primary School in Birmingham, discovered to her cost in 2019. The huge Shakespeare fan (apparently, she hasn’t missed a Royal Shakespeare Company production in 22 years) has been in the firing line as protests have been staged in the city against teaching primary pupils about LGBT+ identities.
The intimidating demonstrations by hundreds of people outside her school, one of two targeted in Birmingham, were loud and disruptive. They were “anything from 30 minutes to an hour long, and it was every single day”, she says.
After many weeks of these angry protests, which put her staff under huge pressure and risked causing fear and upset to children, Hewitt-Clarkson went to court. With the help of the NAHT headteachers’ union, and Birmingham City Council’s legal team, she won an injunction to stop the disruption. Three successful court hearings later, an exclusion zone is now permanently in place to allow all staff and pupils a safe passage to school.
It is this leadership, courage and grace under fire that has earned her the accolade of Tes person of the year for 2019.
This is the third year in which the senior editors at Tes have selected the 10 people they believe have really made an impact in education, culminating in a vote for the overall winner.
Hewitt-Clarkson was their unanimous choice. But the other nine nominees provided extremely tough competition: Abed Ahmed; Daryn Egan-Simon and Ed Finch, of BrewEd; Kim Kardashian West (yes, really); Anne Longfield; Lauren Reid; John Sweller; Greta Thunberg; Samantha Twiselton; and Rebecca West. We congratulate them all on the huge impact they have had this year.
What is common among all those on the list is tenacity. You have to be tough and persistent to make yourself heard in the social media age and, in their own way, they have all shown these qualities. Hewitt-Clarkson came top because, arguably, she has shown them the most.
Many in her position would have given up. Many would have faltered. But even after such harrowing experiences for her and her staff, she still insists that being a headteacher is “the best job in the world”.
She adds: “I would much rather not have lived it. For everyone - the children, the staff the families, for Birmingham - I wish it hadn’t happened.” But she got them all through it, and set a precedent that must be upheld. The alternative, as she notes, would be for heads to betray what school is all about but also to break the law.
“How could I end it?” she asks. “By saying, ‘OK, I will never, ever say again that some people have two mummies’? I can’t do that. I simply cannot do that.
“I am a public servant and some people do have two mummies and under the Equality Act that is as equal as some people who have a mummy and a daddy.”
Of course, many people believe this, but her example of following it through under such extreme circumstances should be a lesson to us all to fight for what we know is right.
“To thine own self be true” : Hewitt-Clarkson not only loves Shakespeare, she lives it, too.
@AnnMroz
This article originally appeared in the 20/27 December 2019 issue under the headline “Caught in the tempest, this head had greatness thrust upon her”
