Interview
Ryde School
Prague, he came to apply for the
headship here at Ryde on the Isle of
Wight.
Wholesome feeling
He may have travelled far and wide
as an adult, but Mark says that he still
retained fond memories of a Golden
Rail holiday to Ventnor that his family
took when he was aged eight - and
when he came back to the Island for his
interview at Ryde School four years ago,
he discovered there was still that same
“wholesome feeling” about the place.
“I have worked in a lot of independent
schools but I had never before found
one so grounded in the area that it’s
from” he says.
“Fundamentally, the pupils still come
from the Island and the Portsmouth
area so there’s a strong sense of being
rooted in the area”.
Around a quarter of Ryde’s pupils
receive some level of bursary support,
which adds to the wide range of family
backgrounds it draws from.
“The diversity of parent background
here is probably more broad than
any school I have worked at” says
Mark. “We have the children of
gardeners, electricians and plumbers,
people who teach in the State sector,
businesspeople, entrepreneurs and
health workers as well as the more
traditional professional families”.
Around 10% of Ryde’s pupils are
boarders from overseas, which Mark
says “creates an ethnic diversity that we
don’t otherwise tend to see on the Isle
of Wight.”
This has often led to private exchange
visits between pupils and their families,
in addition to the organised exchanges
the school runs with schools in France
and Spain.
One of Mark’s big challenges at
Ryde, he says, is to encourage the
understanding that going to a good
school is about more than achieving
good academic grades.
“I see a lot of my ex-pupils who are
now in their 30s and 40s” he says “and
it’s not necessarily the ones who were
the most academically successful who
are now the happiest – it’s the ones
who were the most confident and in
touch with themselves.”
It’s for this reason, among others,
that Ryde School became in 2015 the
first independent school in the UK
to offer the IBCP, a 16+ International
Baccalaureate route that combines
professional and technical skills with
an academic curriculum. In its first two
years students have been offered both
university places and employment at
the end of their studies.
“When I first arrived on the Island I
was amazed at the number of small
businesses here - but I found that they
cannot recruit because they don’t have
the intellectual base.
“That’s where we have to be at the
forefront of change and really promote
the value of rigorous vocational
education”.
Four years into the job at Ryde, the
globetrotting head says: “If you’d told
me 25 years ago that I would be on the
Isle of Wight, I would have found that
incredible, but now I can see myself
settling here. It’s a beautiful place to
live, and the school is really rooted in its
community”.
“My job is to make sure everyone in
the school feels that sense of security
and belonging that living on the Island
gives, but that they don’t feel confined
or limited by it.
“There should be no block on
aspiration or ambition and the Solent
shouldn’t be seen as a a barrier.”
In fact Mark says he sees himself as
a ‘bridge’ that stands between holding
on to familiar values - and exploring a
bigger vision beyond.
Clearly, that is a bridge he has
certainly crossed several times himself.
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