Up and Down in the Dales

Description

Now in his fourth year as an Inspector for English in the Yorkshire Dales, Gervase Phinn still relishes visiting the schools - whether an inner city comprehensive fraught with difficulties or a small Dales primary school where the main danger is one of closure. With endless good humour, he copes with the little surprise that occur round every corner. Some things never change: Mrs Savage roars, Connie rants, and Gervase?s colleagues in the office play verbal ping-pong. But all this can be put behind him each day when he returns home to his lovely wife, Christine, who is expecting their first child. One day, their own son will surely take the limelight in the local primary school where the children?s contrived innocence never fails to win over even the hardest heart.

Gervase Phinn is a teacher, freelance lecturer, author, poet, school inspector, educational consultant and visiting professor of education - but none of these is more important than his family. For fourteen years he taught in a range of schools, then acted as General Advisor for Language Development in Rotherham before moving on to North Yorkshire, where he spent ten years as a school inspector - time that has provided so much source material for his books. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Honorary Fello of St John's College, York. Gervase lives with his family in Doncaster.