‘The school is a major part of the community’
By Violet Brown
Popular principal of Grey Abbey Primary School, Phil Derrick has retired from teaching after over 30 years’ service to the education of young people.
His dedication to the school and community of the village was celebrated at a picnic held at Grey Abbey House on the Rosemount Estate at the end of term, which brought together the whole community including past and present pupils.
As a newly qualified teacher, Mr Derrick started his career in south London in 1992 at a school on the edge of Brixton. He moved over to Northern Ireland in 1993 after his marriage to his wife Sharon who has taught at Killard School in Donaghadee for 32 years. For four years Mr Derrick taught P6 and P7 children at Rathenraw Primary School, Antrim.
He then moved to Grey Abbey Primary School to teach P5, 6 and 7. In 2009 he was promoted to principal and continued teaching P6 and 7 until 2012 when he taught only P7.
Reflecting on the ‘sense of investment’ in children’s lives, Mr Derrick said it was through both the hard times as well as the good times. With responsibility for the care of small children, he believes he was ‘trusted with so much’. “It was about getting to know and support families,” Mr Derrick added.
Describing the Covid pandemic as ‘horrendous’, he recalled how all the staff at the school had to take on extra work in their drive to give the schoolchildren the best possible support during this difficult time.
All of the teachers prepared videos for their classes, and the children were encouraged to send in videos of them doing PE activities.
“I used to try to do a principal’s message once a week for all the children,” he said, choosing different places around the village to do it from and asking the children to guess where he was. One of his fondest memories is of doing a video from the roof of the school office.
“One of the lovely things I got from the school at the community picnic was a photo book with a message underneath every picture,” Mr Derrick said. “One of the boys said he remembered my message from the top of the roof.”
During lockdown the school did things to help and support families supplying them with items such as food. Mr Derrick took part in sponsored runs, one of them was from the school to his home in Kircubbin, going past the home of every pupil who was isolated at home at the time.
“Some of the kids came out and cheered me on,” he recalled.
The school, in partnership with the Lekker Kitchen Cafe, sent encouragement in the form of scones to key workers at the ICU at the Ulster Hospital, where one of the parents worked as a nurse, and to local doctors and pharmacists.
They also went into care homes to supply the staff who worked there. “Those sorts of things are lovely – the school is just part of the community,” Mr Derrick highlighted. “There is a real community feel in Greyabbey.”
The school has a long running relationship with Greyabbey Monday club. When the club members were looking for somewhere to meet, Mr Derrick suggested they use the staff room at the school. He also came up with the idea of members of the Monday club reading to some of the younger children, which ‘the children just loved’.
The bond was further developed during Covid when the children corresponded with their older mentors.
“When I first came to school I talked to some older people in Greyabbey who said when they saw a group of young people they were concerned,” Mr Derrick explained. “Now the young people come over to them to talk because they remember them from school – it is one of the wonderful things that can be done in the community because of the school.”
Another positive thing he experienced at Grey Abbey Primary School was the staff who were ‘a wonderful team’.
“They were just like a family with everyone looking out for each other – that’s really special,” Mr Derrick said.
“Visitors to the school would notice quite quickly the closeness of school and the caring side of it – I couldn’t keep going without that.”
While he was principal at Grey Abbey primary, Mr Derrick spearheaded two large campaigns aimed at improving the safety and wellbeing of the children. One was highlighting the danger of the corner on the approach to the school and after ten years of fighting, the school achieved a part-time speed limit of 20mph.
“It felt like we were banging our heads against a brick wall sometimes, but we got through,” Mr Derrick said.
He went through a similar campaign to get the windows of the school replaced, again taking around ten years. As the building is listed, the frames all had to be wooden and the panes single glazed which cost a lot of money, but they were replaced last year.
One of the things Mr Derrick loved during his time at the school was taking the P6 and 7 children on residential trips, taking them out of their normal environment.
“We used to alternate between going to England or Wales visiting tourist sites and doing something in Northern Ireland such as going to Ganaway Activity Centre or doing water sports on the north coast,” he recalled. “That is one of the things that I will really miss.”
Mr Derrick is ‘incredibly grateful’ to William and Daphne Montgomery who he says have been ‘so supportive’ to the staff and governors of Grey Abbey Primary School.
“I am also grateful to the whole community – staff, parents and grandparents and so many other people in the community,” he said. “It only works if everyone works together.”
Mr Derrick will continue to be involved in the lives of young people through the ‘WhizzKidz’ project for primary school children which meets for a week during the summer holidays in Maxwells Courtyard in Kircubbin. It is attached to Kircubbin Community Church which Mr Derrick and his wife helped to set up 18 years ago.
