Our recent interviews for two new Assistant Headteachers to join our senior team saw a glut of strong applications but the ten who made the two-day interview process were met with a tough panel in the shape of our Sixth Form’s Senior Six.

The panel was made up of (left to right) Grace McCue, Molly Jones, Dylan Wynne (Head Boy) Charlie Bannister (Head Girl), Emily Thompson and Matt Sykes.

 

The students ran their whole session themselves and came up with their own questions including:

What makes The Friary an attractive place to work ?

How would you deal with a student going through a challenging situation ?

How do you think your previous students would describe you ?

 

The Senior Six then met with the Headteacher to feedback their thoughts on the candidates and this was factored into the recalls for the second day.

Our school will be Stacey Walsh (Behaviour & Welfare) and Richard Barnett-Richards (16-19)  to our school’s senior team in January 2022.

Matt Allman, Headteacher, said: “We take genuine care and interest in listening to how our students feel about school and, knowing the Senior Six students very well, we knew we could trust and respect their judgement in these top-level appointments. It was no surprise they came up with a similar line of thinking to staff and governors and they were a credit to the school throughout the whole process.”