Obituary: Patrick Hutton (original) (raw)

As headmaster at St Marylebone grammar school (SMGS), London (1970-78) and at Wolverhampton grammar school (1978-90) Patrick Hutton, who has died aged 76, was an inspirational leader whose innovative methods produced outstanding results. But at St Marylebone Hutton's greatest battles were with the Inner London Education Authority (Ilea), which had appointed him. Soon after his arrival the Ilea proposed to merge SMGS with the local secondary modern school in a plan that involved three sites and a mile to walk on busy central London streets between them. Soon the battle became a cause célèbre as the Ilea found itself in conflict with the new Conservative government. Its secretary of state for education Margaret Thatcher took a keen interest in the fate of St Marylebone.

Hutton was 39 when he became headmaster. Recognising the school's strengths, he left virtually untouched the firm discipline and classics-based curriculum, but established a school council with representatives from each form, and relaxed school uniform and hair-length regulations. He told one mother that the length of her son's hair was a family rather than an educational matter. Hutton initiated sixth-form talks, where the likes of Joan Bakewell, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Latham MP spoke, and he also introduced "minority sports" like rowing. Hutton allowed students to lock horns with him, which we did, to our cost.

Born in Cornwall, he was the son of a naval officer who was killed in 1941 during the evacuation from Crete. Educated at Winchester college, he did two years national service in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry before reading English and history at St John's College, Cambridge.

After graduation he taught at King Edward's school, Birmingham, and then went to the Gold Coast, just before it became independent Ghana in 1957. Teaching at Achimota school, he set up its first course teaching African history - supplanting the hitherto dominant Tudors and Stuarts - before returning to England to become head of English for five years at the Ilea's Woolverstone Hall boarding school in Suffolk. He then became head of English at St Paul's boys' school in London. Then came St Marylebone.

With the return of a Labour government in 1974 the controversy around the school was renewed. Hutton became a symbol of the London battle over grammar schools and St Marylebone hired a barrister to fight its cause, but despite the sympathy of Lord Denning, who heard the case, the historic school closed. The excuse was "falling rolls" in London, but Hutton, writing in 1978, denounced what he saw as the Ilea's "criminal lunacy ... The country will regret it. The perpetrators may even come to regret it themselves." And this from a man who truly supported the principle of comprehensive education.

Hutton went on to become headmaster of Wolverhampton grammar school, leading it into independence in 1979 and establishing it firmly as one of the region's leading schools. He retired to run an antiquarian bookshop and bookbinder's with his wife Felicity in Launceston, Cornwall, and is survived by her, and their children Mark and Ruth.

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