Gary taught Modern Languages in Hertfordshire before becoming an academic. He worked in four different UK Universities teaching and writing on School Leadership & Management. He finally retired as Pro Vice-Chancellor at Sunderland in 2017. Along the way he was visiting Professor at the University of Victoria, Canada, a Foreign Office Know-How Fund and British Council consultant in Eastern Europe and was active in the early development of the National Headteacher training programmes and accreditations.
He has been a school Governor since 1988 in, variously, Oxford City (Middle and High schools), Harrogate (CofE Primary), Ponteland (High School) and latterly UTC South Durham. He is on the Board of a second UTC to open in Newcastle in 2018. He is also a corporation board member of Tyne Coast College of FE and a Company Member of the Pele Multi Academy Trust. He is a fervent advocate of the UTC model as a successful and dynamic component of a healthy School landscape.
Gary sees good School Governance as a delicately balanced and finely tuned business where formal and moral accountabilities and responsibilities are in creative tension with professional ethics and best educational practices –all for the benefit of young peoples’ life-chances and well-being.
