Troubleshooter appointed at Calday Grange Grammar School amid headteacher suspension row

Apr 21 2010 by Ben Turner, Birkenhead News

A WIRRAL grammar school at the centre of a legal threat over its headteacher’s suspension has brought in a troubleshooter.

Calday Grammar School has asked Gareth Williams, principal of West Kirby Residential School, to temporarily take over the running of the school.

Mr Williams, who will continue in his role of 16 years at the residential school, has been appointed as interim executive director at Calday which controversially suspended headteacher Andrew Hall in October amid reports he had clashed with governors.

The appointment comes after solicitors were approached by staff in a bid to have their suspended headteacher reinstated by way of a judicial review.

Mr Williams tells visitors to his school website that he is a government-backed school improvement partner – a role with the remit of helping identify areas of improvement at other schools.

He has also been made a National Leader of Education by the government-backed National College for Leadership, an award given to “outstanding school leaders who, together with the staff in their schools, use their knowledge and experience of teaching to provide additional leadership capacity to schools in challenging circumstances”.

At the time Mr Hall was suspended, the school’s board of governors would only say his absence was “not of a financial or child protection nature.”

Pupils were given a letter confirming Mr Hall, headmaster at the Grammar School Lane school since 2002, will be “absent for a while”.