Deputy Head Pastoral 21-26
The Wykehamist
Vale AEH
Deputy Head Pastoral 21-26
It is a truth very nearly universally acknowledged, that a school in possession of six hundred years of masculine habit, if it should determine at last to admit girls, must be in want of a woman of uncommon sense.
Winchester was, in this respect, particularly fortunate, for in Ali Harber it found such a woman: a colleague and friend who was intelligent and resolute without display or fuss, with the steadiness and care to lead the change that the school had imagined.
Such changes might in retrospect be spoken of as mere historical fact, as if institutions simply wake one morning and find themselves transformed. They do not. They happen because somebody has the patience to think about houses and habits, architecture and atmosphere, policy and personhood, and even the small but not inconsiderable question of what one may now say in Chapel when‘ Gentlemen’ will no longer do. Winchester’ s accommodation, therefore, required the presence of mind to preserve all that deserves to be loved in an ancient institution, while persuading it, firmly and graciously, to alter its patterns. In this, Ali was instrumental.
Ali was, of course, no stranger to Winchester: her acquaintance began in the 1990s as the youngest sister of Beloeite brothers, and, as the family story has it, with her first visiting the College as a babe in arms, passed over to Lindsay Nevin, and later spending happy hours in the house garden with Jasper the dog. There was something delightfully fitting in the idea that a child first attached to Winchester by means of domestic charm and canine society should return in later life to oversee one of the most significant developments in the school’ s modern history— even if, as Ali noted in 2021, it took her father‘ a little bit of adjustment’ to see his daughter in such a role.
To speak only of systems, buildings or admissions would be to ignore the deeper impact Ali made in her four and a half years at Winchester. As Deputy Head Pastoral, she oversaw the reception and proper care of all pupils in the school, bringing to the role the crucial emotional intelligence, humanity, and exacting judgement required; and as Designated Safeguarding Lead, she carried those graver responsibilities by which the moral seriousness of a school is most truly tested. Much of Ali’ s most important work was of the quieter kind: that of making sure that young people were known, safe, and well; that both systems and colleagues were alive to the needs of those they served; and that change, however ambitious, should never outrun care and compassion.
Ali arrived from Benenden, where she had already shown herself a school leader of unusual range— Deputy Head Academic, Head of Sixth Form and Assistant Chaplain amongst her roles— and brought with her a formidable combination of academic seriousness, pastoral instinct, and spiritual depth. There is in her, too, a gladness that saves her from too much solemnity. Ali’ s own love of Jane Austen has always seemed part of her equipment for leadership. She can quote her, naturally, and a comparison is not wholly fanciful: both are adept at identifying good sense and courage, and at measuring absurdity with precision. There are, after all, few situations that cannot be improved by a touch of irony and a sharp ear for human nature.
Her love of cricket found expression in coaching a girls’ cricket team for the first time in the College’ s history. There was football, too, of different flavours. Ali’ s support of Aston Villa speaks of constancy, hope, and a willingness to endure seasons of emotional trial with dignity: qualities not wholly irrelevant in school leadership. And in WinCoFo there is now Ali Pot, a happy notion by which she, Alison Mayne and Alison Seymour, lend their names to the girls’ VIs trophy, fittingly for those who were deeply involved in ensuring that girls were given the opportunity to belong at Winchester College.
A committed Christian, Ali’ s contribution to Christian Union at Winchester sat naturally beside her pastoral and safeguarding work: quiet, faithful, and directed always towards the flourishing of others. Promotion to headship is a natural, expected and deserved step for her. It is easy to see why Dean Close Senior School— with its evident warmth and ethos rooted in the Gospel— should have called her, and why she seems so well fitted to lead it. She leaves Winchester with the gratitude and affection of colleagues who have seen intelligence joined to conviction, and conviction to care.
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