LAST year Jonny Mitchell became Britain’s best known secondary head thanks to the popular TV documentary series Educating Yorkshire.

His cheerful and humorous but firm style in leading what had been a failing school in Dewsbury out of the doldrums and his obvious focus on, and love for, the scores of individual pupils at Thornhill Academy put ‘Mr Mitchell’ on the national stage.

But while he is grateful for being able ‘to do the job I love in a place that I love’ this Yorkshireman would be the first to admit it wasn’t a one-man show but an achievement that would be impossible without Thornhill’s dedicated team of teachers.

Our Secondary Headteacher of the Year award aims to recognise these qualities and more.

Nominations can come from school staff, governors, parents, pupils themselves or anyone else who believes they know a head teacher who deserves this recognition.

It’s about inspirational leadership and the ability to produce a school where people care and which buzzes with enthusiasm, community and achievement.

Director of the Accrington-based North Lancs Training Group, Jim Harkness MBE, said: “Headteachers are an integral part of the leadership of any school and form the basis in which the school operates, helping children develop into adults.

“It is a headteacher’s direction that enables staff to work with young people from reception years onto primary education, high school and finally into an apprenticeship or some other form of further education.”

Anthony McNamara, retired head of St Augustine’s RC High School, Billington, said he believed the culture of a school was set by the head and had to include everyone.

“There are what I call ‘speedboat heads’ who make a dash for glory and leave everyone else at the school bobbing around in coracles in their wake.”

Successful heads, he said, had to take teachers, helpers and pupils with them and also run a school which is part of the community “and doesn’t just lift up the drawbridge over the moat after 3 or 4pm each day.”