BY JOHN JACKLIN
Catharine Darnton’s 19 years as headteacher at Gillotts has proved
a masterclass in running a school
THE headteacher of a feted academy retires this Easter after two decades in the hot-seat and taking it to the top of the table for state schools in Oxfordshire.
Catharine Darnton, 55, has spent 19 years with Gillotts in Henley and has brought the school through the Covid lockdowns, its transition last year to joining the academy group River Learning Trust and achieving an Ofsted rating of “outstanding” in 2023. That is not to mention being the best state school in Oxfordshire for GCSEs during the last academic year.
Catharine, who announced her decision to leave in November, says: “That sentence about this being a school where pupils and staff thrive, that is what matters to me. It was really nice that somebody outside of the school recognised that, because what schools are made up from is the thousands and thousands and thousands of interactions that take place every, every single day.”
She adds: “We make our decisions to be an outstanding provider for what our children and our staff need, but nevertheless it was really, really nice to get that endorsement. From 2019, obviously there are some missing years for Covid, but we produced progress scores in the top 10 per cent of all schools in the country consistently. From 2013 we were in the top 20 per cent and then we got ourselves into the top 10 per cent and we have not gone back on that. So that was really the basis of the judgment.”
She adds: “How was I feeling when I found out we were outstanding? I phoned my first chair of governors who appointed me at that moment to tell them that we finally got there. That was a very, very special moment, but I don’t think headships really come with massive moments of jubilation.”
Those 19 years as have not diminished Catharine’s passion for education, and although she is leaving on a high, career wise she is not sure of her next step but on a personal front she will be devoting more time to life with her husband Richey Re
‘At Gillotts part of the long leaving schedule for Catharine has been ensuring a smooth handover for the new head Mark Bedford’
“I met my husband only one month before I became the head teacher,” Catharine, who graduated from Oxford with a degree in mathematics, says. “So he’s never known me as anything but a head. So I’m hoping that he is still going to like me.” It was Richey, who had been a food technology teacher at Gillotts, that nudged Catharine towards Gillotts when the headship became vacant by praising the school.
“He was working in Lowestoft in Suffolk at the time that we met. And so when we moved in together, we actually have ended up keeping both our homes and we spend holidays in Lowestoft, but we have decided the point has come to sell both the two homes. And finally, having been married for 12 years now, to actually buy one house together, which feels like a big, big step forward.
“So we are going to buy a house just in North Suffolk, in the Waveney Valley. So that is the next plan, the house and then spend some time thinking about what I might do next.”
Catharine smiles as she notes tells how she has “booked a holiday in term time for October. I mean, that is radical. So my husband is Canadian and he wants to go to a school reunion and I would like to go to Canada. And I suddenly thought, ‘Oh, I can, I can, I can go’. We are going to go in the first two weeks of October. Yeah, that will be fun.
“We don’t have children, so that’s the other thing. We are kind of at a point in our lives where we could be a little bit more footloose and fancy free and a little bit less tied down.
“We didn’t meet until I was 37 and he was nearly 40. So it was a very different stage of life from now, so I was not expecting that, obviously, a month before I became head. That was not part of the plan, but he has been a fantastic support to me in doing this job.”
Despite 19 years of “solving all the various problems and challenges that head teaching brings you” Catharine adds: “I have got to the point at which I am still passionately interested in education and young people. But I really have got to the point where I would like to work fewer hours because I probably put in a 65 hour week.
“And also, it is relentless and unpredictable, so you know, you never know when something is going to happen to a child or a member of staff. And we are not the sort of school that says we are open from 8.30am to 4.30pm, Monday to Friday, and out of those hours, please don’t bother us. You know, I have no expectation that my staff are looking at emails out of hours, but I tend to and if somebody needs something, then I will do it.” She adds: “I don’t think that I will get to the age of 65 and look back and think, goodness me, I wish I had gone on working 65 hours a week for a bit longer. I don’t know exactly what I want to do. I need some time to find it.
“It has been an enormous proportion of my working life spent in this school and an enormous proportion of my whole life. So it is more like closing a chapter of my life, not just leaving a job.”
Catharine, who lives in High Wycombe with Richey joined Gillotts as headteacher in September 2007. She had been head for four years at Wycombe High School after leaving the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, where she had spent three years and had led the development of Key Stage 3 maths. After graduating from Oxford she spent nine years teaching maths at Graveney School in Tooting, south west London. Her decision to join Gillotts was driven by its reputation as a “really good community comprehensive school”.
At Gillotts part of the long leaving schedule for Catharine has been ensuring a smooth handover for the new head Mark Bedford, an adviser to the Department for Education and history teacher.
Catharine says: “We’ve been meeting for the past five or six weeks, doing a gradual handover. We’ve done break duties and lunch duties together. I’m trying to really explain where the school is at because, with Ofsted back in the summer of 2027, it is important for the school that he picks it up from the point that I let go. “It was very deliberate to leave at Easter so that he gets time. If there are new things he wants to do in September, he needs some planning time. But that means I’m going before Year 11 is finished, so I am definitely going to come to their leavers’ assembly.”
Catharine says that her leadership team will help with the continuity and handover. “My deputy head teacher [Edward Newbold], has been at the school one year longer than me. So he’s done 20 years. So we have worked together forever. Matt Druce, is one of my assistant heads, he’s done 11 years and Simon West, an assistant head, has been here all the time that I have been here.
He started as a learner support assistant has been head of science. They are absolutely fantastic
Catharine adds: “I’m very deeply embedded here, particularly with staff, some of whom, as I said, have worked here longer than I have, but for many of whom, this is much more than just a place of work.
“And sometimes there is great, great joy and triumph. And sometimes there is profound sadness. In my time here, we have had some very, very difficult times where we have had, not many, but we have had a few child deaths and we have had a member of staff who died.”
She says: “I have been doing assemblies to each year group and what I have been talking to them about is the fact that I, I hope that they have felt that I have cared about them each as individuals and that is the thing that I that they will remember.”
What of her original choice to join Gillotts and for it to become part of her life all those years ago? Catharine says: “It was the best decision I ever made.”