Martin Stephen | |
---|---|
Born | George Martin Stephen 1949 |
Employer | self employed |
Title | High Master |
George Martin Stephen (born 1949) is the former High Master of St Paul's School in London until 1 January 2011. [1] He is an author and has been described as "one of Britain's highest profile heads". [2]
Stephen was educated at Uppingham School, the University of Leeds in West Yorkshire, where he obtained his BA degree, and the University of Sheffield (in South Yorkshire), where he obtained a distinction for his PhD while also working full-time at Haileybury College. [3]
After working in remand homes while still a teenager, Stephen returned briefly to Uppingham as a teacher of English. For ten years at Haileybury College he also taught English, and became a housemaster. He moved for four years to be second master of Sedbergh School, then became headmaster of The Perse School, an independent school in Cambridge, then High Master of Manchester Grammar School, an independent school in Manchester. He served as chairman of The Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, a group of 250 independent schools. [2] [4] In 2004 he moved from Manchester to St Paul's.
On 29 June 2010, he announced his decision to stand down as High Master of St Paul's in August 2011. [5] In the days following his announcement, The Times reported that there had been an "apparent confrontation" with governors over Stephen's ability to raise funds for the school's redevelopment. [6] This claim was rebutted by the school in a letter sent to The Times, in which the chairman of the governors stated there was "no lack of confidence in [Stephen's] fundraising abilities", but rather Stephen had chosen not to seek renewal of his contract in 2011 to allow a new head to provide continuity of oversight throughout the multimillion-pound redevelopment. [7] Stephen had in fact led a campaign that had raised over £30m for St Paul's School, and had previously raised over £10m for bursaries at Manchester Grammar School. In November 2010, he announced that he was to take sabbatical leave from 1 January 2011 until July 2011, when his tenure as High Master was due to end. He was succeeded by Mark Bailey, who agreed to "give some of his time" to St Paul's for the first half of 2011. [1] Stephen was the Director of Education for GEMS (UK) and Chairman of the Clarendon Academies Group.
Stephen went on to found the National Mathematics and Science College with Geoffrey Robinson which opened in 2016. [8]
Stephen is the governor of Hartland International School-Dubai and also heads the school's “Gifted and Talented Education” program. In summer 2020 Stephen was appointed as Chair of Governors at Regent High School, Camden.
Stephen is an author of several academic titles on English literature, modern naval history and war poetry. The five Henry Gresham novels are crime thrillers set in the London and Cambridge of Elizabeth I and James I. He writes under the name of "Martin Stephen".
Stephen suffered a stroke towards the end of 2005, and wrote about his experiences in a work titled Diary of a Stroke. He followed US research that states that if there is a clot in the brain but no bleed into the brain, the brain can be reprogrammed so that speech, writing and physical movement can return nearly to their previous levels. [9]
St Paul's School is a selective independent day school for boys aged 13–18, founded in 1509 by John Colet and located on a 43-acre site by the Thames in London.
Haileybury is an English co-educational public school located in Hertford Heath, Hertfordshire. It is a member of the Rugby Group and enrols pupils at the 11+, 13+ and 16+ stages of education. Over 890 pupils attend Haileybury, of whom more than 550 board. The campus occupies over 500 acres of Hertfordshire countryside, approximately 20 miles from London.
Clifton College is a public school in the city of Bristol in South West England, founded in 1862 and offering both boarding and day school for pupils aged 13–18. In its early years, unlike most contemporary public schools, it emphasised science rather than classics in the curriculum, and was less concerned with social elitism, for example by admitting day-boys on equal terms and providing a dedicated boarding house for Jewish boys, called Polack's House. Having linked its General Studies classes with Badminton School, it admitted girls to every year group in 1987, and was the first of the traditional boys' public schools to become fully coeducational. Polack's House closed in 2005 but a scholarship fund open to Jewish candidates still exists. Clifton College is one of the original 26 English public schools as defined by the Public Schools Yearbook of 1889.
Tonbridge School is a public school in Tonbridge, Kent, England, founded in 1553 by Sir Andrew Judde. It is a member of the Eton Group and has close links with the Worshipful Company of Skinners, one of the oldest London livery companies.
Uppingham School is a public school in Uppingham, Rutland, England, founded in 1584 by Robert Johnson, the Archdeacon of Leicester, who also established Oakham School. The headmaster, Richard Maloney, belongs to the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and the school to the Rugby Group of British independent schools. Edward Thring was the school's best-known headmaster. His curriculum changes were adopted in other English public schools. John Wolfenden, headmaster from 1934 to 1944, chaired the Wolfenden Committee, whose report recommending the decriminalisation of homosexuality appeared in 1957. Uppingham has a musical tradition based on work by Paul David and Robert Sterndale Bennett. It has the biggest playing-field area of any school in England, in three separate areas of the town: Leicester to the west, Middle to the south, and Upper to the east.
Bradfield College is a public boarding and day school for pupils aged 13–18 in Bradfield, Berkshire, England. It is noted for its open-air Greek theatre and its triennial Greek play.
The Liverpool Institute High School for Boys was an all-boys grammar school in the English port city of Liverpool.
The Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), formerly known as the Headmasters' Conference and now branded HMC (The Heads' Conference), is an association of the head teachers of 351 private fee-charging schools (both boarding schools and day schools), some traditionally described as public schools. 302 members are based in the United Kingdom, Crown dependencies and the Republic of Ireland. There are 49 international members (mostly from the Commonwealth) and also 28 associate or affiliate members who are head teachers of state schools or other influential individuals in the world of education, who endorse and support the work of HMC.
The Perse School is a private school in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1615 by Stephen Perse, its motto is Qui facit per alium facit per se, taken to mean 'He who does things for others does them for himself'. The Perse School took girls for Sixth form only from 1994, began accepting girls at 11 and 13+ in September 2010 and was fully co-educational by September 2012. 'Perse' is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, an association of the leading UK independent schools.
Kingswood School is a private day and boarding school in Bath, Somerset, England. The school is coeducational and educates over 1,000 pupils aged 9 months to 18 years. It was founded by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, in 1748, and is the world's oldest Methodist educational institution. The school was established to provide an education for the sons of colliers and Methodist ministers. It owns the Kingswood Preparatory School, the Upper and Middle Playing Fields and a number of other buildings.
Warwick School is a public school in Warwick, England.
Gresham's School is a public school in Holt, Norfolk, England, one of the top thirty International Baccalaureate schools in England.
The Rugby Group is a group of 18 British public schools. The group was formed in the 1960s as an association of major boarding schools within the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. As with the Eton Group, which was formed a few years later, headmasters and heads of the academic departments meet annually in rotation to discuss matters of common interest.
Mark David Bailey, is a British academic, headteacher and former rugby union player. Since 2020, he has been Professor of Later Medieval History at the University of East Anglia. In 2019, he delivered the James Ford Lectures in British History at Oxford University, which were later published as a book, After the Black Death: Economy, society, and the law in fourteenth-century England.
George William Saul Howson MA was an English schoolmaster and writer, notable as the reforming headmaster of Gresham's School from 1900 to 1919.
Thomas Henry Stokoe DD, known as T. H. Stokoe, was an English clergyman, schoolmaster, author and headmaster.
High master is the term used, in place of the more conventional "headmaster", "head teacher" or "principal", to denote the head teachers of two English public schools: The Manchester Grammar School and St Paul's School in London. Two notable high masters of both schools were Frederick William Walker, who served at Manchester Grammar 1860–1877, and St Paul's 1877–1905; and Martin Stephen, who served at Manchester Grammar 1994–2004, and St Paul's 2004–2011. The incumbent high masters of Manchester Grammar and St Paul's are Martin Boulton and Sally-Anne Huang respectively.