To a lot of my friends, Mr Cairns is this mysterious director of the school. They knew who he was; they saw him floating around in the hallways and occasionally appearing at assemblies, his name mentioned by the teachers, but they didn’t really know him, until he came in and gave an inspiring talk to the year 13s about his experience as a journalist.
It was not the same for me; in fact, I was heartbroken when I found out that he would be leaving in December and wouldn’t be the one to give the opening speech at my graduation. I had the great honor to work with him closely in 2024 on a materiality assessment, for the school, and then attended a conference on sustainability in education with him in March, where I got the opportunity to get to know him better as a teacher and as a person. When someone asked me for an example of a truly good person, I would also mention his name. I have never in my life met a more selfless and hardworking person than Mr Cairns. My fondest memory, and the one I feel best sums him up as a person, is when, in Luxembourg, we had a 5 o’clock dinner and then didn’t get back to the hotel until around 10, by which time we were all starving. He then bought us all dinner at the hotel restaurant because he couldn’t bear the thought of us being hungry. That’s the kind of person Mr Cairns is!
So when the opportunity arose to include him in the last edition of the High before he heads off to become a provost in Germany – I knew I had to write it.
1. “So, tell me about yourself as a person – not just as the director at the school…”
So, obviously, school and my work are really essential; it’s central to who I am. And it’s really important to me because I find the purpose of schools to be really important. So actually, school occupies a great deal of my mental space. And I don’t really agree with the idea of work-life balance if I am honest. I’m not saying everyone should work every minute of the day, but I think work and life are kind of interchangeable; they’re the same things. My work is part of my life. So yes, education is important. I read a lot about education and research. I still do some educational research, too. All that said, I also love reading, and I read a lot of history, which is funny, since I’m actually a science teacher by training. And if you look around, like my bookshelves often it’s, I don’t know, stuff about Stalin or whatever so I read a lot. A long time ago, when I still had knees, I was actually an athlete. So my first job was as a runner. It’s a funny sort of job to have. So I used to be a 10,000-meter runner for Great Britain, but then I damaged my knee and stopped running. I still do quite a lot of sport. I cycle, I swim, I row, and I do a lot of kayaking. And of course, I am married and have two children, so that also takes up a fair amount of my time, though less now because the kids are at university.
2. ” Why did you choose to teach? More specifically, why teach at ISL?”
Well, teaching and ISL are different answers. I still think that teaching is the way I can personally help bring about a greater kind of intercultural understanding in the world. I’m not saying it’s the only way to bring about that understanding. There’s a whole range of other things that you can do. You can become a politician, you can become X, you can become Y, but if I think about my skills and my thoughts, teaching is probably the way that I can do that, and I absolutely believe that greater education for a greater number of people leads in the long term to a more peaceful society. Then there’s a question like, well, why don’t I teach in the middle of Pakistan, where I used to work? And the answer is very pragmatic. I thought I would try to teach young people who were going to go on to positions of power, or who were more likely to do so. And in that way, I think you’ve got the biggest, greatest leverage for bringing about change. So I went to international education for that reason.
And then coming out to ISL, actually, there were two reasons. One was a personal one. So my children were born in Switzerland. I think it’s the most fantastic place, really. And my wife and I, before we had children, lived here and loved it. And then the second reason is that when I was looking around for where to go, because I was at school in Singapore, ISL was the school I visited that was most focused on doing things well for children. And I went to other schools, and their focus seemed to be on tradition. There’s a certain way that we do things, and we want to do it that way. Or it was focused on what’s best for parents, or on what’s best for staff. And this was a school I visited, which I thought was most focused on what’s best for young people.
3. “What’s been your biggest takeaway and lesson learned from your time at this school?”
So, if you think about schools, they’re really interesting organizations because everything changes them all the time. Students go through, and even while students are in place, they’re changing constantly; teachers change, Board members change. And yet somehow schools retain a continuous thread, and they are the same in many ways. So I was at a meeting yesterday, and there was an alumnus of the school. And she said, “The school is still very recognizable.” And she was at school a long time ago. And you kind of think, well, why on earth could that possibly be? I think what ties the school together is the importance of values and purpose. So I think my takeaway from the school is that you have a community here that recognizes that the only reason the school exists is for the benefit of young people. There are no shareholders; we don’t make any money. And that people are incredibly committed to doing the best possible job because young people are, you know, deserving of our best. Occasionally they’re frustrating, and occasionally they’re annoying, but actually they are hopeful and, as I say, deserving. And it’s, and I think it’s fascinating to see how people can come together around a common idea, if that idea makes sense to them. So I think, I think my takeaway is that the school is successful because it’s clear about its purpose. And I think all great schools, all great organisations have a really clear purpose.
4. “Any single favourite moment at ISL then?”
Honestly, the things I value and enjoy most have always been connected to my teaching. And I don’t really teach very much. So I really love teaching and being in the classroom. And so, probably the minutes here when I’ve been happiest in myself have actually been in the classroom teaching. I’m obviously happy when things go well here, but I’m happy in a different kind of way. The odd thing about being a director of something is that you often work through people. And so you, you know, you try and support people to do work. But the work is never necessarily your own, right? Because you’re working with other people. Whereas in the classroom, of course, you are totally responsible for whether that lesson is good, bad, or indifferent. So yeah, so probably my teaching is where I have the most fun. That and seeing the reception three and reception four kids arrive off the bus in the morning, because they kind of tumble off the bus like some little mice, and then they kind of scamper around, and that’s just funny.
5. “Now a trickier one – what is one thing you won’t miss?”
There aren’t. As a character, I don’t really focus on things that I don’t like. Because I don’t really focus on people I don’t like. I’m generally about people. I’m neutral, or I like them. I don’t really have the time or the energy to dislike people. It’s just too exhausting. And I think there are problems here that still need to be solved. But it’s not that I dislike anything about the school. Because if I had disliked it, I would have probably tried to do something about it. So I guess I’m kind of lucky that way. There’s an ongoing discussion about the traffic, for example. Is it something that I go into joyfully? Well, no, obviously not. You know, I don’t go whoopee I’m, you know, going to have a conversation about the traffic. Is it a problem that’s difficult to solve? Yeah, yeah, it’s difficult to solve. But I don’t dislike it in any way.
6. “If you could offer everyone at the school one piece of advice, what would it be?”
If I go back to what I said a little while ago about making the best of how things turn out, I think that, and it’s not advice, it’s more just an observation. I think that people can choose to be happy. And in some situations, it’s more difficult, and I’m not saying that everyone should be happy in every situation, and I also don’t believe that everybody has had as privileged a life as I have led, actually. Not because I come from a family of privilege. I don’t come from a rich family, but actually, my life has unfolded in a very positive way most of the time. But I do, I suppose, yes, the thing is, that you want to be, I would want people to be open to experience and open to positive things and not to view the world as a dark and terrible place, you know, because I had that assembly a while ago about how I think society’s getting better. I think that is true. I think society is getting better. I think education has a role to play, but that doesn’t mean society is nice all the time. So I guess, yes, ultimately, my advice to people is, try and view the future positively, even if there are a range of pitfalls and difficulties. I think you have to stay positive.
Thank you, Mr Cairns. Thank you for your extraordinary leadership during the past 9 years. The ISL student body will greatly miss your selflessness and wisdom, and the next group of students you get to lead will be incredibly lucky.
