My friend Pauline Dempsey’s teaching career was spent in primary education in Manchester, where she was an inspirational leader who valued every pupil, believed that most parents wanted their children to make progress and that all staff had crucial parts to play.
Pauline, who has died aged 63, was appointed headteacher at Wilbraham primary school in inner-city Manchester in 1990, and in 1996 moved to neighbouring Claremont primary school, Moss Side, a rundown area where families from diverse backgrounds are often deprived. The school now provides a nurturing environment and good education, and is orderly and happy, stemming from Pauline’s strong leadership until her retirement in 2014.
In that year, Pauline achieved the accolade of best practice case study for the school in the parliamentary review Primary Education 2014/15, which gave her a great deal of personal satisfaction and pride on behalf of her staff and pupils. Pauline’s integrity and professional reputation drew attention from politicians locally and nationally; she was consulted by the Manchester MPs Tony Lloyd and Lucy Powell and by local councillors on educational matters.
Pauline was born in Stockport, Cheshire, daughter of Ellen, president of the Catholic Mothers’ Union, and Francis, who worked for Cheshire Dairies. She was educated at Stockport convent and, after teacher training at Hereford College of Education, she returned to the north-west, and took a job teaching English as a foreign language in 1976 at Siemens in Stockport. After roles at primary schools in south Manchester, she joined Wilbraham in 1985, becoming deputy head two years later.
Pauline’s work was featured in the Economist in a 1997 piece about inner-city Manchester primary schools entitled Moss Side Story, in which her success in creating an environment in which all children could thrive was contrasted with less successful situations for pupils from similar backgrounds.
Considering that pupils’ mental health was crucial to their progress, and long before this was acknowledged good practice, Pauline consulted Place2Be, a school-based mental health charity. Its president, Dame Benny Refson, recognised that Pauline was “tenacious when it came to the wellbeing of the children in her school”.
Outward-looking, keen to learn from international educational practice and to bring new thinking into her school, Pauline visited Trinidad, China and Australia, but she also invited Moss Side parents to speak about and share their own experiences, faith and culture in school.
With her family and friends, she enjoyed travel, culture and sports, including riding, skiing, tennis and walking her dog, Ted, in the countryside around her home in Cheshire and her cottage in north Wales.
Pauline is survived by her partner, Mike Gavagan, two sisters, Clair and Helen, and two nephews, Max and Theo.
