Francis Scott

Modernising headmaster of Stockport Grammar

Francis Willoughby Scott, schoolteacher: born Hull, Yorkshire 8 June 1915; Headmaster, Batley Grammar School 1957-62; Headmaster, Stockport Grammar School 1962-79; married 1953 Margaret Bishop (one son); died Plymouth, Devon 25 July 2004.

Francis Scott was a phenomenon - if not the Infant one, surely a character, with thought and speech patterns that jumped from A to C (sometimes D), whom Dickens would have recognised and been proud to own.

Francis Willoughby Scott, schoolteacher: born Hull, Yorkshire 8 June 1915; Headmaster, Batley Grammar School 1957-62; Headmaster, Stockport Grammar School 1962-79; married 1953 Margaret Bishop (one son); died Plymouth, Devon 25 July 2004.

Francis Scott was a phenomenon - if not the Infant one, surely a character, with thought and speech patterns that jumped from A to C (sometimes D), whom Dickens would have recognised and been proud to own.

As a headmaster he achieved great things through unorthodox means; as a teacher he could bemuse as he sent his pupils on a roller-coaster of ideas and essay construction. As a historian who had read both English and History at Cambridge, E.M. Forster's "Only connect" and A.J. Toynbee's "cycles" were principles reinforced in recipients of the letters that tumbled out from him as his mind whirred, like Dr Who's Tardis, between past, present and future. The phrase "magpie mind" could have been crafted for Francis Scott. No one could ever have accused him of being "menu-driven".

Sixth-formers at Stockport Grammar School (where he was head for 17 years) taught by him for Oxford and Cambridge entrance exams got the full blast of his views on essay technique, described in 1979 by his deputy head as "flashing like a disco". His formula for crisp prose (short sentences, vigorous verbs and avoidance of the passive) was honed as "Don't say, 'Our world is threatened by human pollution', say, 'Man pollutes' or 'Man excretes' - even better, "Man sh . . ." - the Anglo-Saxon expletive lost in the mix of terror and mirth from students wondering how on earth to get away with that in the exam.

What the examiner finally got of course was "FWS" diluted, not neat - which produced an impressive crop of scholarships and places for what was then a small, if ancient, Cheshire grammar school.

Scott's own university degree was a pre-war First from St Catharine's College - emblematic of the wheel of mind and physique that fizzed off in all directions. With a flapping gown always slipping off the shoulder, he darted around school scouring for tasks, erring boys (and staff) and bright ideas. His books bulged with strips of paper alerting to key passages and lateral thinking: "It was a great moment in every boy's life," one of his former colleagues said, "when he suddenly realised what Francis was talking about." Some of the great and good of provincial society whom Francis Scott had to lobby for his projects never did.

Francis Willoughby Scott was born and bred a Yorkshireman, a late child of mid-/late Victorian parents. His father left school at 12 and was an autodidact who learnt Scandinavian languages while in shipping in Hull and was hit severely by the Depression. Both he and Scott's mother scrimped and saved (in pre-free schooling days) to ensure that Francis went to Hymers College in Hull (a debt he later repaid by being the moving spirit and co-author of the school's history, Hymers College: the first 100 years, 1992) before winning a scholarship to Cambridge.

That background left Scott with an abiding absence of pretension or social snobbery. He would lament the gap left between independent and state education after the demise of direct grant status for schools like Stockport Grammar and his later correspondence was peppered with progressive ideas for bridging the divide. He took up teaching in Cambridge after graduation, but the Second World War found him in the Royal Artillery on a ship bound for Singapore. Fortunately diverted before its fall, Scott ended up with the rank of major in India, teaching, as he put it, "Madrassi gunners heavy ack-ack" against a feared Japanese invasion.

He was offered his post-war job as Head of History at Plymouth College over a pint with the then headmaster at Paddington Station, which he accepted "without seeing Plymouth (after the Blitz) or the college". His time there - in a bomb-flattened city then being redeveloped in bold post-war style but steeped in maritime and imperial history - not only cemented the past-present continuum in his outlook but also brought the great partnership of his life with marriage to Margaret Bishop, whom he met as a fellow teacher and wooed while out sailing on Plymouth Sound. It was Margaret who provided the calm and diplomacy to the Sturm und Drang that often accompanied his headmasterships - first from 1957 to 1962 at Batley Grammar School and then, until 1979, at Stockport. She smoothed ruffled feathers and gave him shrewd, independent advice and rock-like support to the very end.

Francis Scott had an eye to the cutting edge - he came back from teaching fellowships in the United States in the early 1950s and 1970s stuffed with ideas and cautionary tales: a useful talent when surfing the school upheavals of the late Sixties and early Seventies. These manifested themselves modestly at Stockport Grammar: not with the excesses of Lindsay Anderson's If but with sixth-form assemblies prepared by the pupils to Moody Blues music, a Christian Fellowship transformed into a very Sixties "happening" - "TCL (To Consider Living)", and a guest lecture from Joan Bakewell, Stockport girl turned Pop Age media icon, taking tea afterwards with besotted boys in Scott's study.

Scott's reaction to all this could be ambiguous - he greeted the TCL posters and photomontage for a summer parents' exhibition (subjects - the Biafran war, NSPCC versus RSPCA etc) with a worried "Where are the ziggurats?" - the altogether safer matchbox models of the Christian Fellowship section. Long hair - he commented that he couldn't distinguish between his Scripture lessons and the Last Supper - could provoke a swoop from his study with the offender given either a suspension or Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle to read. His own often-repeated maxim for action was "If in doubt, do both".

In a more profound culture clash which confronted him, however, he found himself champion of the modern. When he arrived at Stockport in 1962, the prevailing ethos of direct-grant grammar schools was that of the gentlemanly amateur. A pre-war generation of schoolmasters, motivated more by love of subject than by desire to educate the young, was everywhere in senior posts. It was this age group with which the new educational ideas of the 1960s collided.

Stockport Grammar already had a highly distinguished academic record but much of its pedagogic, administrative and financial thinking evoked a bygone era. The progressive emphasis on child-centred education was seen as psychological claptrap and flogging with a bamboo cane was regarded as a useful deterrent. Caps were worn by all pupils and academic gowns by all masters - the latter to protect themselves against chalk dust and the inadequacies of 19th-century heating arrangements (when Scott arrived, there was a fireplace in each classroom). Direct involvement of parents was not encouraged. The teaching staff was paid monthly by cheque and the ancillary staff fortnightly in cash. There were no departmental budgets - those who shouted loudest got most. The conclusion of teaching periods was announced by the ringing of a Dickensian handbell.

In every school in the land adjustment to post-war needs and conditions was achieved with varying degrees of conflict - a story hitherto untold. At Stockport the result was a relentless power struggle. Scott declared war on the Old Guard and they on him. He triumphed, but only after epic convulsions. His shake-up extended further than increased pupil numbers and financial appeals for new buildings. Non-traditional subjects like Biology were introduced, school caps abolished, overhead projectors installed, blackboards and fireplaces ripped out. Mothers and fathers were invited to join a new Parents' Association.

The final deed of an innovative triumvirate of headmaster, chairman and bursar was to expand into adjacent educational premises and define Stockport Grammar's future as co-educational. Within 10 years girls were the norm in the independent sector, at least in sixth forms, and the school had become a national authority on how to integrate them successfully.

Scott was a blend of great fairness - banning sixth-formers from driving cars to school lest they swank over others - and shrewd mischief. "I knew I had one or two pupils who were rogues, but I let them stay - it keeps teachers on their toes and both sides get to learn something." His ability to drop everything to focus on a pupil's family tragedy or "bit of trouble" was touching - he would be on the phone or doorstep, literally, any hour of day or night.

That hands-on human touch continued in his long and satisfying post-retirement afterlife back in Plymouth. There his leadership of the local historical society could encompass a standing-room only lecture from A.J.P. Taylor - who stayed on for two days with his wife with Francis and Margaret (complete with requested commode for the guest bedroom) and received a typically whirlwind "Scott's Tour" of Plymouth's monuments and maritime sites.

The respect and affection he generated was reflected in the 150 plus people who packed his funeral service within sight of Drake's Plymouth Hoe - in the bomb-damaged medieval church of St Andrew's, restored and renewed with the bold Sixties brightness of John Piper windows: a fitting full circle for this passionately original man.

Gordon Marsden and Nicholas Henshall