My aim is to inspire - and that’s just for starters...

MAN with a mission: David Hayes

OASIS Academy Oldham pupils are settling into their new £30 million building which opened in Hollins earlier this month. The Chronicle’s KAREN DOHERTY finds out more about the man at the helm.


FROM chef to head teacher via Hong Kong in under two decades, David Hayes admits he is not known as a traditionalist.

“I do things unconventionally. That’s part of my strength; I have had a lot of different experiences,” said the 39-year-old principal of Oasis Academy Oldham — who recently also gained a powerboat licence.

“It was about going on the journey to get into the position where I could put all of it together to influence the lives of young people.”

His aim, he says, is to make sure every child, no matter what their background or problems, achieves their full potential with “no excuses” — because that is what he has done.

Brought up in a middle-class family where both parents were teachers, Mr Hayes explained: “At the age of 15 my father died suddenly and that put me in a very different frame of mind. I became a bit insular and isolated within school and it wasn’t really picked up. As a result I drifted.”

Leaving school without achieving the grades he could have, he added: “That was perhaps the lowest point in my life. My options were quite limited, which led me to look at other avenues.”

Fortunate to be offered a place on a hotel and catering course, he thrived in the college environment.

“People knew who I was, understood who I was, and I was doing things differently: All of a sudden I found I was quite good at it and as a result my self esteem grew.”

Work experience at Mere Golf and Country Hotel followed, where he fell in love with cooking. He was a chef there for eight years before moving to the Grovesnor Hotel, Chester, but said: “I started to believe in myself a little bit more. I knew at that point I wanted to address the balance from leaving school.

“I gave up chefing at 20 and haven’t been in a kitchen in anger for 20 years.”

The environment taught him about hard work and he did his GCSEs and A-levels, eventually studying at John Moores University and training as a PE teacher.

From the age of 23, he knew he wanted to be a head teacher — and achieved the goal after posts that included teaching at the Japanese International School in Hong Kong and as head of the national School Sports Partnership.

After joining the Future Leaders programme to fast-track talented potential head teachers, Mr Hayes worked in Kirby and was then deputy principal at Oasis Academy MediaCityUK in Salford, before taking up the top post at Oasis Academy Oldham last year.

And while he says that many things have improved at the school— which replaced Kaskenmoor and South Chadderton, he conceded that things were “still not good enough”.

The school’s five A* to C pass rate GCSE dropped from 37 to 33 per cent this year. The Government’s new target for schools is 40 per cent.

But the academy says its English results were affected by the national marking controversy, while maths results were up seven per cent. A new head of English and maths has also been appointed.

Mr Hayes, who is married with two adopted children, said that the gap with national results had to be closed quickly: “In many schools we fall foul of having a high focus on A* to C. We fall down on the expected progress pupils are meant to make.

“We have to change our focus to say ‘this child has come to us with this expectation and this is where they need to be before they leave us’. If every child made their expected progress, over 60 per cent of students would get five A* to C. That’s a fact in all schools.”

“My mission is to make sure this academy is seen as equal to the other great schools in Oldham.

“On paper we are not there, but we will be there in future.”



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