The Salopian no. 157 - Winter 2015

10 SCHOOL NEWS
Professional Development mentor,
Assistant Housemaster of School
House and … Head of History.
I remember overhearing some of my
Fifth Form set talking a few years ago
about teachers. They were comparing
notes on their most organised teacher,
and alighted on Miss Whittle. But
let’s turn the clock back to 25th April
2007, in the week of Laura’s first
school inspection. Not surprisingly,
she had a meticulously prepared
lesson for Period 1, and was lucky
enough that the inspector decided
to attend that very lesson. Less lucky
was the fact that Laura, of all people,
had overslept and didn’t turn up to
the start of the lesson. She eventually
arrived some time into the lesson to
find the inspector sat at the back. But
half the class were missing. A happy
ending though – the pupils were so
astonished that she wasn’t there that
they had gone off in search of her,
and the inspector ended up forming
a positive impression of how caring
Salopians were towards their teachers.
In 2011 she was appointed Head
of History in succession to Mike
Morrogh. Numbers taking History
have hit record numbers, and she has
successfully introduced the Pre-U.
The profile of the faculty has been
high, with a strong series of trips and
lectures, and plenty of pupils going on
to study History at university. As Head
of Faculty she has combined a passion
for the subject with a keen eye for
detail on the administrative parts of the
job and a very supportive approach to
those working in her faculty.
We have enjoyed her own writing over
the years. When Mary Sidney Hall was
opened, Martin Humphreys asked her
to write an article on Mary Sidney,
which was published in the Salopian.
And then there is the weekly bulletin
for lower school tutorials this year.
I had asked her to instigate this last
September and had suggested that she
got her Public Nose team to write it. A
week into term, she sent me the draft
of the first week’s article on Scottish
Independence, which was strikingly
impressive. The email correspondence
went as follows, and reflects Laura’s
positive, can-do approach:
Laura – “Is this the kind of thing you
imagined?”
MC – “It’s terrific. Precisely what I
wanted. It’s very impressive for a
pupil. Or did you write it yourself?”
Laura – “…I wrote it myself. The
pupils wanted to write about other
things, so I did it. To be honest I enjoy
writing and it was fun to do. Glad you
liked it!”
In the past couple of years she has
extended her academic role, joining
the Academic Committee and taking
a leading role in the Sixth Form and
lower school essay competitions that
have been created in the past three
years. Outside of school, she has been
involved with Pre-U examining.
Even though Laura was pretty much
straight out of university when she
applied, perhaps it’s not surprising
that her CV was already very full.
Amongst other things, she had been
involved with running her college
May Ball. This should have given us a
clear idea of how well she would be
suited to working in the Shrewsbury
Common Room as she elaborated by
saying, “Worked closely with jugglers,
magicians and comedians.”
I suspect we have each of those here!
July 11th saw Laura’s marriage to
Nick Wakeling, formerly of the English
Faculty at Shrewsbury. We were
disappointed when Nick left us for
Charterhouse, where he is now Head
of English, and we are disappointed
again to see Laura following in his
footsteps to join the Charterhouse
History department.
We wish Laura and Nick every
happiness in the future – and if it turns
out that Shrewsbury does a better line
in jugglers, magicians and comedians
than Charterhouse, we would be
delighted to welcome them both back
here in the future.
Steve Biggins
Tom Taylor, Robin Moulsdale, Robin
Trimby, Mark Dickson, Mark Lascelles
… all hard acts to follow, but Steve
Biggins had an outstanding five years
as Master in Charge of football at
Shrewsbury School between September
2009 and June 2015, achieving an
incredible amount in his time, leaving
football at Shrewsbury in very rude
health indeed. Steve arrived with a
flourish and won the Boodles and
Dunthorne ISFA Cup in his first year in
charge of the team. This was a squad
that played attractive attacking football
and had a wonderful cup run including
a memorable semi-final victory away at
Millfield on penalties. The final was a
fine occasion; a magnificent 3-0 victory
over Repton at Milton Keynes Dons in
front of the whole School. Those that
witnessed this knew that it was the
start of an exciting era for Shrewsbury
School football. Steve took great pride
in improving the technical abilities of
each player and instilling in them the
fundamentals of the game. His sides
were always composed on the ball and
understood their game plans. Steve was
a fine school master too and his teams
always played in the right spirit. He was
a calm but authoritative presence on
the touchline (under the watchful eye
of his ever present wife, Wendy) and
he had a knack of winning tight games
with the nous gained from a hugely
successful professional playing career
with Shrewsbury Town, Derby County,
Oxford United and a spell in Sweden.
Statistical analysis is now king in the
modern professional sports era and
Steve’s “opta index” stats would rate
very highly in terms of his “win ratio”.
Coaching in schools is about more than
this though, and Steve had the gift of
creating teams that were greater than
the sum of their parts and bringing
enjoyment and a sense of purpose to
every training session.
Steve could only be described as the
consummate professional in terms of
his attention to detail in preparation
of his teams, but also in his care and
concern shown to colleagues and the
way that they prepared their teams and
got their boys to play football. He was
always on hand in the common room
to discuss the merits of 4 4 2 versus, 4
5 1 or 4 3 3 and ever ready to supply
coaching drills to enhance various
aspects of performance. An innovator
too, he introduced heart rate monitors
in training, video analysis of matches,
swimming pool cool downs after
games, the use of a sprint coach in preseason
training, improving nutritional
advice for players and helping boys
to pursue their dreams of football
scholarships to the USA. Pre-season
camps were successfully introduced
to rotate yearly with overseas tours
that included Valencia, Villa Real,
Barcelona, Sweden and Qatar. Teams
also got a chance to play on the indoor
pitch at St George’s Park, a real thrill.