Farewell to Ann – 43 years at school!
ARUNCORN school has bid a fond farewell to its longest standing staff member. Ann Collier is retiring after working for 43 years at Ormiston Bolingbroke Academy (OBA) and students, staff and the wider community were determined to ensure that her significant service to the school, in its many forms, was honoured.
Mrs Collier, who has most recently held the role of personal assistant to principal Kathryn Evans, has held her role for seven principals during her time and has seen thousands of students walk through those school gates and now sees the next generation walk through the same gates.
As Mrs Collier retires following an incredible career with the school, she looks back on the journey that the academy, which is now sponsored by Ormiston Academies Trust (OAT), has been on during the last four decades.
When she first started working at the school, the current building was not yet built, and staff and students were housed in an old school building in Balfour Road.
The building had been closed for a number of years so there was a lot of work to be done at the time to make it habitable. Staff remember it to be a unwelcoming, cold building that lacked in modern amenities and had very little central heating.
There was no central bell to signal lesson changeover and this achieved instead by staff going out in to the school yard and walking up and down ringing a hand bell.
This was described as a treacherous job when snow was thick on the ground and staff could be seen slip, sliding all over the yard!
Easter 1979 saw Brookvale Comprehensive, as the school was then called, the move onto the current academy site and into parts of the present OBA building.
The school opened initially with firstand second-year students only and as time progressed, it opened up to all years from 11-16.
By this time the school was fully furnished with central heating and all the mod cons and Mrs Collier and the staff who had endured the miserable building on Balfour Road, were thoroughly enjoying their surroundings and new working environment.
However, their comfort was to be short lived when disaster struck four years later and a serious fire wiped out the front half of the school.
Staff spent the next two years working in mobile accommodation and this is where Mrs Collier, a woman of considerable talents became accustomed to ‘wearing many hats’.
Long-standing colleague Mrs Wightman, describes how the much-loved PA was ‘always dashing from the main building to mobiles, at the beck and call of most staff and always able to flag things up in a jiffy!’
Twelve years later the school suffered a second fire, which saw Mrs Collier heading back to the mobiles, again wearing her many hats.
Celebrations started on Monday, July 19 with 180 Year 7 students and a huge array of colleagues clapping Mrs Collier out of the building to a limousine waiting outside with her husband, daughters and grandchildren.
Mrs Wightman, who has worked with Mrs Collier throughout the whole 43 years of her career at this school, said: “I could go on forever regarding her personal qualities but it is suffice to say that Mrs Collier is a role model to us all.
“This is a sentiment echoed by all staff at the academy who will miss Mrs Collier sorely. However, we wish her a happy and fun filled retirement (we hear she has already bought a wet suit ready for a new hobby she’s planning!) and bid best wishes and many thanks from everyone at Brookvale Comp, Halton High School and Ormiston Bolingbroke Academy.”