PRINCIPAL BOWS OUT AS SCHOOL CELEBRATES RUBY ANNIVERSARY
Principal bows out as school celebrates its ruby anniversary
by Terry Patterson
FOR A highly respected and inspiring school principal of 16 years renown, and a teacher for more than 37 years, he signed off with the most unlikely, yet remarkable comment.
"Now I hope to get a proper education," smiled William (Bill) Harper, as he contemplated the volume of time his early retirement as headmaster of Omagh High School on Monday should provide.
Early, however, is not, perhaps, the right word, for Bill had been destined to retire at the end of the past summer term until the Board of Governors asked him to remain in post until they appointed a replacement.
Typical of the man, he agreed, despite noting: '"It's a time-consuming job, and those who think we have it made with two months off in the summer and packing up Monday to Friday at 3.30pm could not be more wrong.
"That school teaching was something of a sinecure never applied to principals of large schools and it does not apply to any teacher now. Indeed, my heart goes out to those in the profession today.
"Too many chiefs and too many groundbreaking orders are making what should be a pleasurable experience a stressful exercise. When a new idea was promoted the High School embraced it in a managed way, information technology being a good example.
"But I tell my staff to stop and consider. Pythagoras was a sixth century BC philosopher and mathematician and they have still to prove his theorem wrong. And, if we could see forward to any date in the future, it will be still be being taught."
Ruby anniversary
Bill, who brings the latest era at the school on Crevenagh Road to a close - it recently celebrated its ruby anniversary - will not be idle when he walks away from it all on November the fifth. His remark about a "proper education' was a throwaway reference to his desire to read, in a more reflective mood, the works of the great authors such as Tolstoy and Dickens.
"I haven't read a good novel since my student days." he admitted, "and 1 am looking forward to changing that."
However, it may well be a case of when he can find space in a rather full diary, for. like thousands-before him, Bill will very likely, sooner rather than later, have to confront the age-old question, 'how did I ever find time to work?'.
You see he does not intend taking life easy in his favourite armchair and slippers, as might be expected of a man who had a triple heart bypass in 1992 For a start Bill will continue lecturing for Belfast's Queen's University (QUB).
And he is also to retain his several links with the community organisations he has served loyally long-term, chairing the local Police Liaison Committee for one, and on the sporting front with Omagh Academicals RFC and Lough Erne Yacht Club.
"I think I am a good example of someone working on after having had this particular operation, although my consultant's advice was always to work a little, but not in such a high-profile job," said Bill.
Belatedly
So now, having belatedly taken that wise advice on board, it is time to move on, and it looks very much as if the war cry of Henry Peter. Baron
Brougham and Vaux. while Lord Chancellor in 1828, should be heeded, "Look out, gentlemen, the schoolmaster is abroad".
Wife, Pamela, four adult children and four grandchildren might do their best to slow him down, though. Bill and Pamela live at Ballynahatty, about four miles from Omagh town centre, and their youngest son, Stuart, is employed locally.
Otherwise their family is domiciled in England. Daughter, Gail (Mrs. Andrew Wright) is resident in Hever, near Tunbridge Wells in Kent, son, Andrew, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he works in Northumberland regional development, and Cathryn is an environmental public relations official with London's west Ealing council.
Their father, a native of North Down, is now 59. He was educated at his local Groomsport Primary School, and at Sullivan Upper School, Holywood. His third level education was at QUB, from where he graduated in 1964 with a BSc honours degree in geography/geology.
"I returned to Queen's for a year to lecture in soil science, while I did some part-time teaching before going full-time in 1965," he disclosed.
In 1976, while teaching at Omagh Academy, Bill obtained an MSc in environmental science from the University of Ulster's Coleraine campus, and eight years later he took a diploma in educational management through the Open University.
He is currently an A-level geography examiner and a part-time lecturer for QUB's mature student primary degree course promoted at the town's College of Further Education.
All his teaching service, which began at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, has been carried out in counties Tyrone and Fermanagh, although Bill is quick to admit that he gained widespread experience by visiting schools in other counties.
After a two-year stint as housemaster at Portora's Gloucester House, he moved in 1967 to the Academy, where he became head of the geography/geology department. Bill went on to enjoy positions as senior teacher and second master at the grammar school before assuming the exacting role of headmaster at Omagh High in 1985.
Exemplary
During his exemplary career Bill has lectured across the Province, on an occasional basis, on behalf of the Centre for Educational Management, developing the skills of newly appointed heads and vice-principals.
And he was founder chairman of the steering committee that established the Omagh Teachers' Centre, sited initially at Omagh County Primary School in Campsie, and chairman of the Tyrone and Fermanagh branch of the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT).
The establishment of the centre in the 1970s was a landmark event in local education for it signalled the start of teachers in the area working collectively. Bill is justly proud both of his involvement in getting the centre off the ground and of the fact that the committee he subsequently chaired secured a permanent home for it.
"Eventually we retained the services of a teacher, Cecil Duncan, to run the Teachers' Centre on a part-time basis, and then we persuaded the Western Education and Library Board to incorporate in its plans for the new library at Irishtown Road provision for a proper facility." he related.
During his spell at the Academy Bill had been the driving force behind the First XV, and he insisted that the side beaten in the 1985 St. Patrick's Day Rugby Schools' Cup Final was not necessarily the pick of the bunch.
Unfortunately, that was his swan song, and he never did get the opportunity to take another school team to the blue riband final at the Ulster HQ at Ravenhill.
'Championship'
"I coached the Academy 1 st XV for 18 years, and really pushed the game to the limit while I was at the school," he revealed. "There were many fine teams in the course of those years, some as good as, if not better than the 1985 squad, but who were beaten in earlier rounds of the championship by the eventual winners."
Although ultimate triumph came tantalising close, before being denied him, Bill claimed he had derived great pleasure from being part of the success of quite a number of players who came under his tutelage.
"Among the good young players I coached was Willie Anderson, who was to captain Ireland and play for and coach my old club, Dungannon," said Bill, who, himself, had skippered a very good Dungannon side to the senior league and cup double in 1968.
A wing forward or prop, Bill also captained Queen's and the Academicals, and he coached the Omagh outfit for three seasons, 1986 to 1989. Having served as president of the Accies from 1995 to 1997 he is presently vice-chairman of the club. He is. too, a past member of the committee of the Ulster Branch of the Irish RFU.
But his sporting career is not, and never was confined to the oval ball game. Bill represented Tyrone on the tennis courts in the 1960s and 70s and he continues to be an active sailor, having been Commodore of Lough Erne Yacht Club in 1993.
He is a former council member of Rotary, an occasional angler and a keen gardener, although not to the extent that he was 20 years ago when his name featured regularly among the prizewinners at Hillsborough, Ballymena, Bangor and other annual flower shows. Daffodils and roses were his forte.
However, away from the chalk face Bill, who has been a Deputy Lieutenant of Tyrone for almost three years, probably takes greatest satisfaction from his work with the Omagh Community Police Liaison Committee.
Community spirit
"The Omagh committee was used as an exemplar for Northern Ireland, and I like to think that we always kept the level of community spirit and links with the police on a high plane," said Bill, who has been chairman for the best part of 10 years.
"I have worked with some magnificent public-spirited people right across the divide, and we have not always found it easy, but I genuinely believe that we greatly helped in insulating this area from the conflict which raged elsewhere in the Province."
Yet, it is a sobering thought that Omagh High School's 'In Memoriam' roll of students, past pupils and teachers murdered by terrorists in the course of The Troubles stretches to 18 names, the first of them dating back to 1974.
A commemorative plaque to those who lost their lives is prominently sited in the school's main entrance, and Bill ensures that a memorial table dedicated to them and standing beneath the tablet is never without a fresh bouquet of flowers.
"We had two current students and three past pupils killed in the Omagh bombing in August 1998, and Ronnie Hill, who lay for so long in a coma after the Enniskillen Remembrance Day atrocity, once taught here," recalled Bill with more than a hint of great sadness.
"Several children on the rolls were also injured in the town bombing three years ago and just recently one of them, a young girl, finally had her knee brace removed. That is the suffering the world does not see, but which we are ever conscious of.
"The school has always done its best to support pupils and to guarantee them a normal and caring environment. It has been taxing for all members of the staff here to provide a good, stable education during very difficult times in Northern Ireland."
And Bill has done more than most to meet the challenge. Alongside that dedicatory plaque is one inscribed with the names of head boys and head girls, a practice he 'resumed' in 1987/88, although not even he is sure if those appointed 14 years ago were possibly the first ever holders of the posts.
He was also instrumental in instituting the school's Parents' Association in the late 1980s, and said it had been a very worthwhile project and the association an immensely helpful one.
Bill has held a watching brief on the youth club based at the school, supporting what it does without interfering, and he was responsible, too, for securing a full-time youth tutor for the Crevenagh Road campus.
Omagh High's annual carol service in First Omagh Presbyterian Church, which he introduced, has become a December highlight for many of the town's senior citizens and friends and neighbours of the school, thanks to him.
"We hold a reception for those people earlier in the day and we invite them to share an early celebration of Christmas with us in church," he explained. "They do, and the combined venture has become another important community link among the many that we have developed and which I consider vital for a school like ours."
Reflecting on his 16 years as head of the High School, Bill said it had been a demanding assignment delivering an optimum standard of education year by year as enrolment slumped with a consequential reduction in staff numbers from 47 to 30 during his tenure.
"It was a significant feat to improve and maintain standards while managing changes in education which invariably did not favour schools with declining rolls," he argued. "But the league tables show we succeeded. Omagh High is among the best controlled secondary schools with a grammar school on its doorstep.
"In 1999/2001 we were the top controlled secondary with 43 per cent of pupils gaining A* to C, and in the last school year that figure had slipped only minimally to 41 per cent.
'Philosophy'
"But my philosophy has always been that it was a foolish headmaster who did not see the value of education at all levels of competency. This is a school of wide-ranging ability and, while I will always emphasise the learning process, there is more to teaching than what equates to the survival of the fittest.
"I have frequently been delighted by pupils, who have had to struggle, maximising the level of their own particular potential. There has been, too, tremendous personal fulfilment for me seeing young people overcome the stigma of 11 Plus failure and going on from this school to obtain first class degrees.
"Both at the Academy and here I have been most fortunate to have had so many marvellous youngsters pass through my hands. They have been a credit to the two schools, and, with regard to the High, they have brought so many compliments on the way both they and the school have performed.
"I have enjoyed a very good relationship with my pupils, and former students from both schools have been in touch with me to wish me well in retirement. It is pleasing that they have taken time to speak to me and that they have seen the wisdom of what I was attempting to do at times when we did not always see eye to eye."
by Terry Patterson
FOR A highly respected and inspiring school principal of 16 years renown, and a teacher for more than 37 years, he signed off with the most unlikely, yet remarkable comment.
"Now I hope to get a proper education," smiled William (Bill) Harper, as he contemplated the volume of time his early retirement as headmaster of Omagh High School on Monday should provide.
Early, however, is not, perhaps, the right word, for Bill had been destined to retire at the end of the past summer term until the Board of Governors asked him to remain in post until they appointed a replacement.
Typical of the man, he agreed, despite noting: '"It's a time-consuming job, and those who think we have it made with two months off in the summer and packing up Monday to Friday at 3.30pm could not be more wrong.
"That school teaching was something of a sinecure never applied to principals of large schools and it does not apply to any teacher now. Indeed, my heart goes out to those in the profession today.
"Too many chiefs and too many groundbreaking orders are making what should be a pleasurable experience a stressful exercise. When a new idea was promoted the High School embraced it in a managed way, information technology being a good example.
"But I tell my staff to stop and consider. Pythagoras was a sixth century BC philosopher and mathematician and they have still to prove his theorem wrong. And, if we could see forward to any date in the future, it will be still be being taught."
Ruby anniversary
Bill, who brings the latest era at the school on Crevenagh Road to a close - it recently celebrated its ruby anniversary - will not be idle when he walks away from it all on November the fifth. His remark about a "proper education' was a throwaway reference to his desire to read, in a more reflective mood, the works of the great authors such as Tolstoy and Dickens.
"I haven't read a good novel since my student days." he admitted, "and 1 am looking forward to changing that."
However, it may well be a case of when he can find space in a rather full diary, for. like thousands-before him, Bill will very likely, sooner rather than later, have to confront the age-old question, 'how did I ever find time to work?'.
You see he does not intend taking life easy in his favourite armchair and slippers, as might be expected of a man who had a triple heart bypass in 1992 For a start Bill will continue lecturing for Belfast's Queen's University (QUB).
And he is also to retain his several links with the community organisations he has served loyally long-term, chairing the local Police Liaison Committee for one, and on the sporting front with Omagh Academicals RFC and Lough Erne Yacht Club.
"I think I am a good example of someone working on after having had this particular operation, although my consultant's advice was always to work a little, but not in such a high-profile job," said Bill.
Belatedly
So now, having belatedly taken that wise advice on board, it is time to move on, and it looks very much as if the war cry of Henry Peter. Baron
Brougham and Vaux. while Lord Chancellor in 1828, should be heeded, "Look out, gentlemen, the schoolmaster is abroad".
Wife, Pamela, four adult children and four grandchildren might do their best to slow him down, though. Bill and Pamela live at Ballynahatty, about four miles from Omagh town centre, and their youngest son, Stuart, is employed locally.
Otherwise their family is domiciled in England. Daughter, Gail (Mrs. Andrew Wright) is resident in Hever, near Tunbridge Wells in Kent, son, Andrew, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he works in Northumberland regional development, and Cathryn is an environmental public relations official with London's west Ealing council.
Their father, a native of North Down, is now 59. He was educated at his local Groomsport Primary School, and at Sullivan Upper School, Holywood. His third level education was at QUB, from where he graduated in 1964 with a BSc honours degree in geography/geology.
"I returned to Queen's for a year to lecture in soil science, while I did some part-time teaching before going full-time in 1965," he disclosed.
In 1976, while teaching at Omagh Academy, Bill obtained an MSc in environmental science from the University of Ulster's Coleraine campus, and eight years later he took a diploma in educational management through the Open University.
He is currently an A-level geography examiner and a part-time lecturer for QUB's mature student primary degree course promoted at the town's College of Further Education.
All his teaching service, which began at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, has been carried out in counties Tyrone and Fermanagh, although Bill is quick to admit that he gained widespread experience by visiting schools in other counties.
After a two-year stint as housemaster at Portora's Gloucester House, he moved in 1967 to the Academy, where he became head of the geography/geology department. Bill went on to enjoy positions as senior teacher and second master at the grammar school before assuming the exacting role of headmaster at Omagh High in 1985.
Exemplary
During his exemplary career Bill has lectured across the Province, on an occasional basis, on behalf of the Centre for Educational Management, developing the skills of newly appointed heads and vice-principals.
And he was founder chairman of the steering committee that established the Omagh Teachers' Centre, sited initially at Omagh County Primary School in Campsie, and chairman of the Tyrone and Fermanagh branch of the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT).
The establishment of the centre in the 1970s was a landmark event in local education for it signalled the start of teachers in the area working collectively. Bill is justly proud both of his involvement in getting the centre off the ground and of the fact that the committee he subsequently chaired secured a permanent home for it.
"Eventually we retained the services of a teacher, Cecil Duncan, to run the Teachers' Centre on a part-time basis, and then we persuaded the Western Education and Library Board to incorporate in its plans for the new library at Irishtown Road provision for a proper facility." he related.
During his spell at the Academy Bill had been the driving force behind the First XV, and he insisted that the side beaten in the 1985 St. Patrick's Day Rugby Schools' Cup Final was not necessarily the pick of the bunch.
Unfortunately, that was his swan song, and he never did get the opportunity to take another school team to the blue riband final at the Ulster HQ at Ravenhill.
'Championship'
"I coached the Academy 1 st XV for 18 years, and really pushed the game to the limit while I was at the school," he revealed. "There were many fine teams in the course of those years, some as good as, if not better than the 1985 squad, but who were beaten in earlier rounds of the championship by the eventual winners."
Although ultimate triumph came tantalising close, before being denied him, Bill claimed he had derived great pleasure from being part of the success of quite a number of players who came under his tutelage.
"Among the good young players I coached was Willie Anderson, who was to captain Ireland and play for and coach my old club, Dungannon," said Bill, who, himself, had skippered a very good Dungannon side to the senior league and cup double in 1968.
A wing forward or prop, Bill also captained Queen's and the Academicals, and he coached the Omagh outfit for three seasons, 1986 to 1989. Having served as president of the Accies from 1995 to 1997 he is presently vice-chairman of the club. He is. too, a past member of the committee of the Ulster Branch of the Irish RFU.
But his sporting career is not, and never was confined to the oval ball game. Bill represented Tyrone on the tennis courts in the 1960s and 70s and he continues to be an active sailor, having been Commodore of Lough Erne Yacht Club in 1993.
He is a former council member of Rotary, an occasional angler and a keen gardener, although not to the extent that he was 20 years ago when his name featured regularly among the prizewinners at Hillsborough, Ballymena, Bangor and other annual flower shows. Daffodils and roses were his forte.
However, away from the chalk face Bill, who has been a Deputy Lieutenant of Tyrone for almost three years, probably takes greatest satisfaction from his work with the Omagh Community Police Liaison Committee.
Community spirit
"The Omagh committee was used as an exemplar for Northern Ireland, and I like to think that we always kept the level of community spirit and links with the police on a high plane," said Bill, who has been chairman for the best part of 10 years.
"I have worked with some magnificent public-spirited people right across the divide, and we have not always found it easy, but I genuinely believe that we greatly helped in insulating this area from the conflict which raged elsewhere in the Province."
Yet, it is a sobering thought that Omagh High School's 'In Memoriam' roll of students, past pupils and teachers murdered by terrorists in the course of The Troubles stretches to 18 names, the first of them dating back to 1974.
A commemorative plaque to those who lost their lives is prominently sited in the school's main entrance, and Bill ensures that a memorial table dedicated to them and standing beneath the tablet is never without a fresh bouquet of flowers.
"We had two current students and three past pupils killed in the Omagh bombing in August 1998, and Ronnie Hill, who lay for so long in a coma after the Enniskillen Remembrance Day atrocity, once taught here," recalled Bill with more than a hint of great sadness.
"Several children on the rolls were also injured in the town bombing three years ago and just recently one of them, a young girl, finally had her knee brace removed. That is the suffering the world does not see, but which we are ever conscious of.
"The school has always done its best to support pupils and to guarantee them a normal and caring environment. It has been taxing for all members of the staff here to provide a good, stable education during very difficult times in Northern Ireland."
And Bill has done more than most to meet the challenge. Alongside that dedicatory plaque is one inscribed with the names of head boys and head girls, a practice he 'resumed' in 1987/88, although not even he is sure if those appointed 14 years ago were possibly the first ever holders of the posts.
He was also instrumental in instituting the school's Parents' Association in the late 1980s, and said it had been a very worthwhile project and the association an immensely helpful one.
Bill has held a watching brief on the youth club based at the school, supporting what it does without interfering, and he was responsible, too, for securing a full-time youth tutor for the Crevenagh Road campus.
Omagh High's annual carol service in First Omagh Presbyterian Church, which he introduced, has become a December highlight for many of the town's senior citizens and friends and neighbours of the school, thanks to him.
"We hold a reception for those people earlier in the day and we invite them to share an early celebration of Christmas with us in church," he explained. "They do, and the combined venture has become another important community link among the many that we have developed and which I consider vital for a school like ours."
Reflecting on his 16 years as head of the High School, Bill said it had been a demanding assignment delivering an optimum standard of education year by year as enrolment slumped with a consequential reduction in staff numbers from 47 to 30 during his tenure.
"It was a significant feat to improve and maintain standards while managing changes in education which invariably did not favour schools with declining rolls," he argued. "But the league tables show we succeeded. Omagh High is among the best controlled secondary schools with a grammar school on its doorstep.
"In 1999/2001 we were the top controlled secondary with 43 per cent of pupils gaining A* to C, and in the last school year that figure had slipped only minimally to 41 per cent.
'Philosophy'
"But my philosophy has always been that it was a foolish headmaster who did not see the value of education at all levels of competency. This is a school of wide-ranging ability and, while I will always emphasise the learning process, there is more to teaching than what equates to the survival of the fittest.
"I have frequently been delighted by pupils, who have had to struggle, maximising the level of their own particular potential. There has been, too, tremendous personal fulfilment for me seeing young people overcome the stigma of 11 Plus failure and going on from this school to obtain first class degrees.
"Both at the Academy and here I have been most fortunate to have had so many marvellous youngsters pass through my hands. They have been a credit to the two schools, and, with regard to the High, they have brought so many compliments on the way both they and the school have performed.
"I have enjoyed a very good relationship with my pupils, and former students from both schools have been in touch with me to wish me well in retirement. It is pleasing that they have taken time to speak to me and that they have seen the wisdom of what I was attempting to do at times when we did not always see eye to eye."
Further Information
Publisher: TYRONE CONSTITUTION
Ref: TC/0942
Published Date: 01-Nov-01
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