Mark Lauder Strathallan School

Job title Headmaster (Head Man to the pupils!)

Age 51

Marital status Married

Children Two boys, 15 and 16, both at Strathallan

What subject do you teach?

History, English, Classical Civilisation, Ancient History, Government and Politics

How do you choose to spend your holidays?

Most holidays, once reports are done, my family and I head to our house in Cumbria. It’s a 17th century parsonage and we have been gradually renovating it over 15 years, though nearly finished now.

When I became a deputy head I treated myself to a cement mixer!

We get involved in village life while there, walk in the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District before I generally unwind by cooking, gardening and reading; the things I don’t have the chance to do during term time.

In the summer holidays we always go for ten days wild camping on the Isle of Coll – where there is no signal and we are all offline – bliss.

What is the greatest life lesson school taught you?

In my first two years at secondary, on the West Coast of Scotland in the early 1980s, I loved drama and music, art lessons helping disabled children at lunchtimes and sport on a Saturday morning.

Well okay, I turned up to freeze on the wing rarely getting the ball, but at least I persevered.

The teacher strikes that followed for the next three years meant this all stopped. Growing up with my mother, a widow who worked full time night shifts as a midwifery sister, meant that I had to take the initiative.

Joining a local tennis and squash club replaced school activities.

So I suppose I learned to push myself, take the initiative and, in a phrase we use these days, ‘step outside my comfort zone’.

It gave me confidence in ways I only came to appreciate later in life that if you want to achieve something, you have to be prepared to work hard for it.