A pioneering teacher with a radical approach to pupils’ very different needs

Colin Reid (1951-61) is a man way beyond straightforward classification. He was a teacher for 38 years, most of it as a headmaster, expanding the range and depth of pupils’ education, complemented by innovative ways of achieving his goals. He was closely involved in the early development of the teaching of the International Baccalaureate.

Throughout his career, he would set aside restrictive rules where he felt they limited pupils’ development. Married to an active environmentalist, he has cast a wide and purposeful net, drawing ideas and inspiration from various beliefs and cultures. In retrospect, he regards his sixth form years at Brentwood as central to forming his outlook and approach.

Born in 1944, his first memories were of Hong Kong, where his father Alan worked for Jardine Matheson and he attended an Anglo-Chinese school. A parental transfer to London in 1950 meant a short stay at Harecroft Hall boarding school in the Lake District. With the family ensconced near Ingatestone, it was time for Colin’s academic mettle---and later those of brothers David and Keith---to be tested at Brentwood Prep. In his final year there, he was head of Lawrence and fondly remembers a group effort to build a race track for Dinky toys from bricks and dust behind the Upper and Lower One classroom block. Some of the dust was ground out of the walls of Middleton Hall itself!

In the senior school, being “no good at games,” he took the scouts seriously, attending camps led by ‘Perk’ Rowswell and Tom Cluer. “Perk took great pride in always having enough funds left for his very grubby crew to have a meal in the dining car on the return journey.” In the CCF, as the WO2 of Support Company, he helped Jack Higgs with serious-minded but rather unrealistic training in putting down colonial disturbances and aiding Civil Defence in the event of a nuclear attack.”

A talented Arts VIth

Colin was a member of the Arts Vlth in his Advanced level years. “Our experience was extended well beyond the stereotypical three A levels.” A Christmas holiday reading scheme, a summer thesis and extra courses enhanced learning. “We benefitted from exceptional teachers. These included George Elcoat and Terry Best in French, Sid Bergin in economics, Dennis Tarrant in geology and Tom Sheppard in Russian. “We used a Moscow textbook, the opening sentence of which read ‘Here is a powerful Russian fighter plane.’ ”

Tom Gardner, the newly arrived assistant chaplain, organised religion and philosophy conferences. Alan Mould, who had counselled Colin to take history, left but Colin regarded his successor, the “inspiring Peter Watkins,” as the “greatest influence on my intellectual development. Watkins regarded history as a ‘contested subject’ and would use quotations about people and events and ask you to ‘make up your mind.’ His stimulating approach encouraged a high level of student participation in discussing the affairs of the country and the world as Britain retreated from its imperial role.”

Colin was one of a group of UVI Arts pupils who, having just finished A levels, visited historical sites in France and Spain under Mr. Watkins’ guidance. “We managed to get our A level results at the post-restante in Barcelona.” He was a member of the Debating and History Societies and edited the journal Medieval and Modern. He enjoyed forays into Byron and other Romantics under the guidance of William Barron, who loved reading to his classes. ‘Spud’ also masterminded the School’s theatrical productions—nearly always Shakespeare. Colin had roles in Julius Caesar, As You Like It and Hamlet. The production was taken to the Ernst Moritz Arndt Schule, Brentwood’s link school in Bonn, with Geoffrey Elcoat leading the trip. “We found the War still fresh in the adult memory.”

His contemporaries were a talented crew. Sir David Eady and Rodger Hayward Smith, who became judges; Professor Sir Roderick Floud, economic historian and academic administrator; Malcolm Vale, an Oxford History professor; Bernard Porter, a professor specialising in imperial history at Newcastle; Stephen Halliday, author of books on London’s history; solicitor Philip Crapnell and Ian Small, Headmaster of the Bootham School, York. Colin remains in touch with Mike Carey, who became a head teacher in Yorkshire, and with Chris Causton who, after history at Oxford, became an IT specialist.

Post-A level, Colin spent a term in the VIIth Form under Jim Rennie, leaving the School in December 1961. He regretted to the passing of the Direct Grant scheme. In his day, about 85 per cent of Brentwood pupils were state financed.

Nigeria, Cambridge and Exeter

Before university, Colin taught History, English and Latin at the Ijebu Ode Grammar School, Nigeria for nine months. He voyaged to and from west Africa as a member of a cargo ship’s crew.

Headmaster Ralph Allison had a strong international outlook, an enthusiasm he communicated to the young Reid. Allison arranged for Brentwood and Ibjebu Ode sixth formers to spend exchange years at each others’ schools. Reid’s parents acted as interim guardians for two boys.

From 1962-65, Colin read history at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, tackling British, European, American, African and Asian history.

After three months in the USA and Canada, courtesy of a 99-day $99 Greyhound ticket, he attended Exeter University to do a PGCE (1965-66). There he met his future wife Betsy, also studying for her PGCE. Betsy came from Rhodesia where she had obtained a London University external degree in history, having studied in the pioneering African history department of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. They were married in 1966. While Colin had once contemplated a career in the prison service, the die was cast in favour of teaching.

Teaching at Tonbridge

His first post was at Tonbridge School (1966-72), where he taught history. His pupils included Sir Anthony Seldon, later a high profile headmaster and biographer of Prime Ministers. The Head of Tonbridge, Michael McCrum, set up a couple of small boarding houses where stroppy but intelligent sixth formers were treated like undergraduates. Colin and Betsy looked after one of them for three years. 

He became dissatisfied with the narrow focus of A levels and was attracted by the wider scope of the novel International Baccalaureate as a University qualifying examination. He felt that the greater range of subjects, with their emphasis on both arts and science and a modern language would enhance pupils’ development.

However, his enthusiasm was not generally shared by his colleagues. Colin recalled that both Atlantic College and the IB examination were thought by some in the Tonbridge staffroom to be “highly speculative and risky ventures.” However, the IB was to become the major progressive stimulus of his teaching career.

Colin’s alma mater came to share his confidence. Brentwood took up the IB option in parallel with A levels in the early 2000s. In 2024, the IB is flourishing.

Atlantic College: ripe for the IB

Atlantic College in South Wales was part of the United World Colleges movement, originated by Kurt Hahn. The college was housed in St Donat’s castle, which dated from the 13th century and was once owned by William Randolph Hearst. In 1960, it was bought by the college. Colin was appointed head of history and politics in 1972, the year the college switched from all A level to all IB.

Students at UWC establishments had to live, work and share ideas and activities with people with very different backgrounds, experiences and prejudices. Atlantic College students came from 50 countries. Some 25 per cent were British.

Political ferment and conflict around the world provided a stimulating context for the International Baccalaureate, not least because some students came from unstable countries. Italian and Greek students had heady experience of ideologically driven school strikes. Students from mainland China had been through the Cultural Revolution so their education had been greatly disrupted. “They were great fun to teach.”

Teaching was in English. There were social service and extensive outdoor pursuits, involving the hills and the sea. Initially, the pupils were all boys but girls were soon admitted. From 1976 to 1980, Colin and Betsy also ran a co-educational boarding house at the College.

Shades of Peter Watkins

In the 1970s, national history dominated the syllabuses in England and Wales. However, the IB programme focused on international and transnational history. Under Colin’s guidance, history at Atlantic College, was taught as a ‘contested subject’---shades of Peter Watkins-- providing contrasting interpretations and urging students to find evidence to support their own views. He introduced a political theory course, especially popular with students from East European countries. Betsy taught African history.

Margaret Thatcher, then Secretary of State for Education, visited Atlantic College, apparently to find out about the IB. “She wasted the opportunity by spending almost the whole 45 minutes of our briefing session lecturing us about her own ideas.”

For Reid’s first three years, over half the IB Diploma candidates in the world were at Atlantic College, giving it a big voice in the development of syllabuses and the professionalism of IB examining. Trying to ensure the setting of a clear, fair and comprehensive set of questions across the modern history of five continents was a considerable challenge.

“The transparently external and objective nature of these examinations was vital in establishing the IB’s credibility. Some universities responded enthusiastically while others were suspicious and looked for IB grade equivalences in their national systems.”

When the Peace Studies School was set up at Bradford University in 1975, Colin focused on developing a fresh IB subject, covering aspects of political theory, conflict and peace making approaches within and between states. The course included a practical 10-day visit by Atlantic College students to the divided and troubled city of Belfast. This helped them to understand the conflict and to witness peacemaking work by local social service charities.

The Leverhulme Trust funded a research assistant, workshops and conferences to share the experience of the course. This endeavour was criticised in Parliament but continued at Atlantic College and other centres for over 30 years.

Later, Colin recalled: “Some schools took up the IB because it is an international qualification; some because they believe in the value of its curriculum; others mainly want an alternative to discredited national exams. The IB ensures that the curriculum is both international and global in concept and, as much as possible, in execution.”

St Christopher School: a profoundly attractive philosophy

“I had continued my own development throughout the 1970s, as a person and as a teacher,” continued Colin. By 1980, however, it was time “to move on and run my own show.” He found a school likely to give scope for the radical Reid approach to education, albeit in a very different way from Atlantic College: St. Christopher in Letchworth, Herts. Founded in 1915, it was a progressive boarding and day school for two to 18-year-olds, set up by Theosophists and for 50 years run by a Quaker family. Colin, by now professing no particular religious faith, was “profoundly attracted by the school’s values and the integrity of practice. My confidence was reinforced by Ralph Allison, who had been involved in inspecting the school and wrote to me warmly on my appointment.”

Under Colin’s headmastership, there was a relaxed approach to discipline: no competitive games, no uniform, no form orders, no prizes and a vegetarian diet, with staff and pupils addressing each other by first names. Significant innovations at the school were discussed and decided in plenary sessions with senior pupils in the School Council. “However, I had a very rarely used power of veto when it came to implementation, with a view to keeping the School’s mission and practice on track.”

St. Christopher did not restrict itself to the academically gifted. The school provided for a large number of pupils with special needs, such as Asperger’s, attention deficit syndrome and dyslexia. There was a Montessori nursery. “I regret that we did not take in Downs Syndrome children. At the time, we did not think we could meet their needs.

“Some parents chose the school because they shared its ideals. Others transferred their children to us because they were not thriving in mainstream establishments. My central responsibility was to maintain the school’s child-centred values and its viability. Betsy too had a central role. We found the task absorbing for 23 years until our retirement.”

Lessons in a wider world

Colin‘s interest in developing education went well beyond the boundaries of his schools. He edited a series of teachers’ books, enlisting Peter Watkins as one author. He became chairman of the Boarding Schools Association, whose members were mainly smaller state and private boarding schools. He was a member of a Schools Council working party on a new history programme to replace A level. “However, it became bogged down as some universities erroneously regarded sixth formers taking a larger number of subjects, as inevitably entailing a dilution of academic standards.”

Colin became an independent schools inspector.  “I visited and very largely appreciated a wide range of schools. In 1999, the government, anxious to counter progressive tendencies in education, moved against the iconic Summerhill school with its 76 pupils. Accordingly, an OFSTED inspection ‘failed’ the school. Colin was part of an alternative inspection team which visited Summerhill and supported a successful appeal to the Independent Schools Tribunal which prevented closure.

Helping prisoner rehabilitation

In retirement, Colin’s main activity for 15 years was prison monitoring. Under the aegis of the Independent Monitoring Board, monitors visited regularly, saw what they wanted, listened to prisoners in confidence and had access to individual records. The role encompassed rehabilitation and preparation for release, reporting concerns independently and if necessarily publicly. Colin monitored a prison for 15 to 17-year-old boys and another housing those with life sentences seeking parole. His broad conclusion: “In Britain, we lock up far too many offenders, most of whom would have much better prospects of rehabilitation under effective supervision within their own communities.”

The Reids have been in retirement since 2004 at Waldringfield by the River Deben in East Suffolk. Here they kept a 30-foot boat which they sailed over the years “from Brittany to the Baltic” and kept for ten years in the Hebrides. Both are vegetarians and take a close interest in environmental and green matters. Betsy manages an intensive garden and produces her own honey. In a book-filled cottage, they contemplate the deleterious effects of social media and the march of climate change. Reading about the British Empire, Colin mused: “In considering what it was and what it did, we need to go well beyond the simplistic notions of anti-colonialism.”