Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

A model school

‘This always had the reputation of being the school on the hill, which I wanted to get rid of’

issue 09 September 2018

It would be a cliché to say that Christian Heinrich fell into his career in education. But really, there isn’t any other way of describing his route into teaching. In his final year of a degree in American literature, he returned home to nurse his sick mother. When she passed away, his old prep school headmaster asked him for a coffee. ‘He played that wonderful trick,’ explains Heinrich. ‘He said, “Oh Christian, I’m taking a Latin class, come along.” Midway through the lesson he had to take a phone call. “Christian, just finish the lesson, and then come and find me.” I duly finished things off, and that was that. ‘“When are you going to start?” he then asked.’

Heinrich settled into teaching, meeting on the way his wife Belinda, also a teacher. She agreed to support him for a year while he studied his PGCE, and then both of them headed to Summer Fields school in Oxford.

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