Sir alec clegg

In the 1970s when I was training to be a primary school teacher, I went to a fascinating session at my college which detailed the work of Mrs Muriel Pyrah, a primary teacher in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The session focused on the particular, and unusual way she taught, and on her focus on art, which was part of a much wider interest in art in that authority. This seminar was influential to me in the way that I approached my own teaching in primary schools. Much later on, in the 1990s, and working in the area of leadership and management, I came across the name Alec Clegg, the Chief Education Officer of the West Riding, in terms of how he worked as a leader and manager. I noted that he was a man of many pithy comments, who brought humour to management, a quality that I appreciated. I also made the connection back to Mrs Pyrah, and began to see her work as rooted in the ethos that Alec Clegg generated in the West Riding. This led me to read more about that period, that authority, and Sir Alec in particular.