There is so much to come, pupils at Epsom College told before deaths

‘I am absolutely loving my time at the college. It has been wonderful’

‘I find the strategy and scope of Epsom an exciting prospect’

ONLY two months ago, Emma Pattison, the first female head of Epsom College, was telling pupils how excited she was about the year ahead.

“There is so much to come,” she told pupils on the school’s podcast, Epsom Insight, saying she was looking forward to experiencing school traditions such as Founder’s Day, where parents and alumni enjoy picnics, house sports competitions, the annual pancake race and prize giving.

“I am absolutely loving my time here so far,” she said shortly before Christmas. “It has been very, very busy, but absolutely wonderful.”

Her sudden death has left the school community shaken and devastated.

Mrs Pattison grew up on a farm in Lincolnshire, where, as a child, she would get up at 6:30am to feed the chickens.

She has spoken passionately about her love of teaching, learning and working with young people. Her mother was also a teacher who she has described as a role model.

Mrs Pattison started her career on Thomas Cook’s graduate training programme, expecting to be able to travel the world after graduating from the University of Leeds with a BA Hons in French and English Literature.

However, she said she found herself working in Bromley, south east London, which was not “quite the sparkly lights of where I’d imagined I’d end up”.

One rainy morning, she said she found a copy of an education trade magazine in a coffee shop, which helped her recall her experiences teaching English in France and Spain, which she had “loved”. “I thought, why am I doing something I absolutely hate? This is more fun. I wasn’t that motivated by making money for a corporate entity.”

Her teaching career began in 2002 at Lutterworth College, a state school in Harborough, South Leicestershire, where she taught French and Spanish. In 2005, she joined Caterham School, a private, co-educational day-and-boarding school in Surrey, where she also taught French and Spanish and became Head of Year 8. From there, she went to Guildford High School, a top-performing independent girls’ day school, where she was Head of Modern Foreign Languages for four years.

She married Mr Pattison, a chartered accountant, in 2011. In 2012, she moved to St John’s School, Leatherhead, where she rose to Deputy Head in 2013. Three years later, she was appointed to her first Headship at Croydon High School in south London.

She said she “absolutely loved her first headship” at Croydon, where she was widely respected. She decided that after learning so much there, she wanted to “use that knowledge and apply it to something different”.

“I like strategy and I suppose the scope of the college here is a little bigger than I’ve had before, and I found that an exciting prospect,” she told pupils on the school podcast.

During the application process to take over as head of Epsom College, she taught a 30-minute social, health and economic lesson on a topic of her choice: “identity”. Announcing her appointment last year, Dr Alastair Wells, chairman of the board of governors, said the lesson “was of such outstanding quality it concluded with spontaneous applause from pupils”.

In her free time, she said she enjoyed reading, travelling and music. She described herself as a “life-long learner”, someone who “just always wants to grow and learn”.