Rick James has touched the lives of more than 3,000 Elizabeth College students as their teacher, department head and latterly vice principal.
He retired last week, at the end of the College’s Trinity term, after 41 years as one of the school’s most popular and influential figures.
Staff and students choreographed a giant display of their affection for their departing colleague and master. He then shared with Express his reflections of a working life at a school which he said he unexpectedly "fell in love with" and which he, as much as anyone, helped shape into what it is today.
Pictured: In the last week of term, the school left Rick in no doubt about how much he will be missed.
Visiting the College today, one particularly visible sign of Rick's influence is the presence of girls. Though not alone, he was an early and persuasive advocate for admitting girls, initially in two year groups last September, and ultimately across the school.
"Co-ed is brilliant. I would love to have done it years ago," said Rick. "There were conversations about it over the years. But they never went further than the sixth form link with The Ladies' College.
"Fundamentally, the world out there is co-ed. Children come to us from co-ed primary schools and they leave to go to co-ed universities or workplaces. That's the world we live in. It doesn't make any sense to me to say suddenly at the age of 11 that it’s better for girls and boys to separate and to say they are better off learning separately rather than learning each other's perspectives all the time.
"Take literature as an example. It's a rather one-sided discussion if you're looking at it from a single-sex perspective. You can apply that across the school.
"We've been blessed having a great set of girls who came to us in years seven and 12. They have been very open and enthusiastic. They have wanted to do lots of things they might not have been expected to do traditionally and they have thrown themselves into everything. For still a relatively small number in the school, they are a huge presence.
"Next year, they will be in years eight and 13 and we'll have another intake of girls in years seven and 12 and most year groups will be co-ed. The following year, only one year group won't yet be co-ed. I think most boys' schools that have gone co-ed have found that the balance tends to settle at about 60-40. We might end up there eventually."
Pictured: Going co-educational - long an aspiration of Rick's - was a fitting change in his last year as Vice Principal. Credit: Elizabeth College Facebook.
Rick was also a key champion of another recent change: the introduction of bursaries – places partly or wholly funded by the College and its benefactors.
"There have been times when the College has had to look very carefully to itself – to its reserves of resourcefulness. The changes in States' funding were a potential threat. The loss of special place holders, though inevitable in the demise of the eleven-plus and understandable, could have changed the character of the College a great deal," he said.
"One of the things that has always been important to me was that it shouldn't be a school only for the wealthy. I could have gone to an independent school in the UK if I'd wanted that. It would be a huge loss to the school if we became a school only of fee payers. This is one reason why the bursary scheme is so important."
Rick is so passionate about opening places at the College to young people from a wider range of backgrounds that he has agreed to return in September to take on a "very part time role" promoting the bursary scheme.
"I do that currently – home visits, meeting prospective parents and students, trying to explain the scheme and encouraging people from all walks of life not just to take advantage of the scheme but also that we will support children from all backgrounds once they are here. I hope we can build up the scheme and make it available to more people. For example, I would like to build connections with businesses and perhaps get some scholarships sponsored or partially sponsored."
Ironically, in this way, the College's own bursary scheme may in reality come to provide more opportunities for children from poorer backgrounds to obtain places at the College than the eleven-plus provided in the post-baby boomer years.
Pictured: Rick hands out ice lollies as part of his retirement celebrations in the last week of term.
Rick, whose father was a doctor and whose mother was a psychiatric social worker and then a teacher, was a scholarship boy himself, in Worcester, although his origins are in South Wales. "That’s partly why I'm so passionate about our bursary scheme. I was one of the few who managed to get a place at a school I wouldn't otherwise have been able to attend. I just scraped in. I was very lucky to go there.
"I was at school with Rik Mayall and shared a study with him through my A Level years. Put it this way – we had a lot of fun and I probably didn't take my A Levels quite as seriously as I should have done. We were mostly concerned with having fun. At one point, there was a meeting without coffee with the head teacher.
"I did ok in my A Levels actually. I wasn't then of a mind to go to university, but I did go, and for some reason I decided to read English and Fine Art, which was bizarre because I had no talent whatsoever in Fine Art. I ditched that fairly quickly. I only survived a term because I really wasn't an artist in any way, shape or form. I just plucked a degree out of the sky so I could go and live in Oxford because it sounded like a nice idea.
"I then went into management for a short time, which also didn't suit me at all. I went to work for a mail order company balancing accounts and things like this. There was the manager, me and 80 women. I was supposed to end up managing this office. They were delightful but it absolutely wasn't for me, not least because I found that adding up was not my big thing.
"I went off to read English and Film in one of the first of those courses that was done down in Kent. That would have been about 1977/78. I did the degree and then I kind of wandered into teaching. I did a post-graduate teaching qualification. At the end of the year, I had enjoyed the teaching experience, and at that stage I thought I'd do teaching for a while but it wouldn't be a career for life.
"I taught briefly in the UK. Then I was offered the job here at the College in Guernsey and I thought it looked quite nice for a couple of years."
Pictured: Addressing an assembly in the College Hall was one of the final acts of Rick's 41-year career at Elizabeth College.
Rick said it would be wrong to describe the school then, in the early 1980s, as austere, but the culture was still a shock to a young, relatively liberal newcomer to the island.
"There were some things I took time to adapt to. I was a young man coming to a school with very strong traditions. When I left school, the attitudes there were much more liberal than they were here when I arrived a few years later. I think it was typical of the island at the time to be perhaps a few years behind trends on the mainland, but I don't think that’s the case today. When I came here, the school felt – nicely – quite old-fashioned.
"There was a great sense of discipline and a lot of emphasis on doing things a certain way. Jackets had to be buttoned, caps needed to be worn, everyone needed to be called sir. In that sense, it was old fashioned to me compared to schools I had known in the UK.
"It took about three years for the school really to get under my skin and then I began to fall in love with everything about it."
I put it to Rick that he has been a constant force for modernisation. "I hope so. Any institution – perhaps schools especially – needs to be open to evolving. Not just change without good reason but change where things can be done better. There is always some tension between maintaining the traditional values of the school and taking the school forward with inevitable changes it needs to keep up with society."
The College’s motto is Semper Eadem – always the same. "I’ve always seen that as T S Eliot wrote of 'the still point of the turning world' in The Four Quarters. Everything is in constant flux in the world around you, but you need roots which are solid. It's not that nothing should ever change, but that there are solid, deep roots in the values of the school."
Pictured: Rick arrived at Elizabeth College in 1981 thinking he would stay "for a couple of years" and ended up remaining for 41 years.
Richard Wheadon, an Oxford rowing blue and Great Britain oarsman in the 1956 Olympics and Principal of the College between 1972 and 1988, recognised that Rick could contribute to the leadership of the school.
"I was keen to get some sort of position of responsibility so that I had the beginnings of a voice. When he gave me the head of middle school – years nine and 10 now – that was an opportunity to be heard and do a few things to bring about some change.
"Richard himself was overseeing much change while carefully maintaining the school's values. There had been a great shift in teaching staff. I got the impression that he had changed a lot of things in the school which people were reluctant to see change because they were used to the old ways, but it was necessary modernisation – like putting in systems to make sure the standard of education was up to scratch. He worked incredibly hard. He was a real details man. He wanted to check that anything that went out in the school's name was absolutely perfect and so everything crossed his desk. He’s still a great supporter of the school."
Rick would go on to work under five other Principals. He occasionally looked at other roles elsewhere but has no regrets about staying at the College. "I think I made the right calls most of the time. Ultimately, I would have liked to become a head teacher, but that didn't happen, although last summer I had a period as Acting Principal. I looked at the Director of Education role. But there was always a strong call here. I was quite ambitious but perhaps later on in my career than I should have been."
Pictured: Students' experiences of the College have changed a great deal in Rick's four decades there but the core values of the school - represented by its motto: Semper Eadem - have remained the same.
Among hundreds of colleagues, Rick picks out a few who had a particular influence on him.
"I can’t not mention Robin Roussel. Robin was just wonderful. A classic, brilliant schoolmaster. He taught geography; he taught art; he was a wonderful sportsman – cricketer, hockey player, athlete. I got on very well with Vernon Collenette. Ian Rawlins-Duquemin was a lovely man. Alan Cross became a great friend. Alan is somebody I have huge respect for. He is intellectually so bright and such an interesting person to spend time with."
And then there was Ken Fletcher. "I came to teach English under Ken as head of department. Ken was just the most wonderful man. I had huge respect for him. He brought up two girls single-handedly while producing and writing school plays at the same time as running the English department. He was incredibly generous to me and always backed me and then, ultimately, stepped aside for me to be head of department. An amazing and generous man.
"When I came here, the whole of the department's scheme of work existed on one size of a piece of foolscap paper and most of it began with parsing. I had no idea what parsing meant. I had been taught in the 60s and it wasn't trendy to do anything like that. But I couldn't admit to Ken I didn’t know, so I had to look it up, and quickly adapt to it.
"A scheme of work setting out lessons week by week? Absolutely not. Each year had probably three lines about what you were meant to cover and at the end a selection of reading books you could choose from. In a way, it was very liberating because you were the master of what you wanted to do in the classroom. Ken was always hugely supportive of anything I did. He was very good at recognising that maybe he wasn't the person who was up for change, but here was someone – in me or in Chas Ponsford – who wanted to do things very differently and I always felt I had his backing."
Pictured: Rick was initially recruited as a teacher of English. He ended up running the department and taking various other leadership roles before becoming Vice Principal on the retirement of Alan Cross in 2009.
In those early days, Rick spent most of his time in the classroom teaching, something he has inevitably done less and less of as he has taken on more roles in management and leadership. He has also spent time as an inspector of schools nationally.
"Yes, I think teaching is probably still the part I love most. Some students came up to me the other day and they were kind enough to say they had enjoyed my teaching and I have to say that still meant a lot to me. The last GCSE group I taught had their difficulties with English but did phenomenally well. I’m still hugely proud of that. But, in truth, I haven’t taught that much for some while. What I do now – or have been doing – is more on the side of recruitment of students and staff. A lot of the things I do are trying to solve things and make things work for staff.
"What I won't miss is meetings which don't achieve outcomes. Meetings that are timed and achieve things I’m ok with. Meetings that are kind of open-ended and ramble on and you come out unsure what was achieved are frustrating and I won't miss them. I won't miss some of the administration and bureaucracy that goes with this role.
"But it’s quite an emotional time for me. It's the right time to go but I'll miss it hugely. I'll miss the people – it’s always the people. Such a different bunch of people working together towards a common cause. Different foibles, interests, backgrounds, preoccupations – just as I have – and we kind of rub along together very well and we have a common interest in the school and the students. At this time, I think we have a fabulous student body and a fabulous group of staff.
"I mean, look at the commitment of staff. The range of activities outside the normal curriculum is massive. That is down to the willingness of staff always to give that bit extra. We still take lots of trips off-island because we believe it's really important to give students opportunities to see beyond these shores. To go on cultural visits – or sports tours – those experiences are hugely important, but they would be impossible without the commitment of staff."
Pictured: The view from Rick's office on one of the upper floors of the College. "I'll certainly miss this view," he said.
Rick has always been struck by the depth of friendships formed at the College.
"I was talking to year 13s at their recent leavers' dinner and I was saying to them that there is a friendship and camaraderie among students here that you don't often get. There is a very strong bond – an unusually strong bond – between people who have come to or been associated with the school. People genuinely form really strong friendships and they stand by their friends. I always quote my sons – they have great friendships from here and would do anything for each other and they are stronger than friendships they have made elsewhere."
Looking to the future, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Rick does not foresee that the island's three grant-aided colleges will necessarily work more closely together, let alone integrate.
"I doubt it actually. Blanchelande has recruited well – they seem to be getting strong numbers there. I don't know what the Ladies' College numbers are, but I think they're holding up. I just don't think there's much appetite for it. They work together as a group to negotiate with the States and there is joint sixth form provision between Elizabeth and Ladies' College – that was a sort of marriage of necessity to be able to offer and staff what were then new A Level courses.
"I suppose the colleges could be forced to work together more closely if the States really put in place a strong, well-funded vision for secondary education. There was an opportunity to put it in place and there is still an opportunity, but they’d have to put a really decent chunk of money behind it. I suppose change in the States' sector perceived as a great success could be a challenge for the colleges to respond to."
To be sure, these and other challenges and opportunities will be for someone else now, but you get the feeling Rick will maintain more than a passing interest in the future success of the College.
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