Mary Green

Dame Mary Georgina Green DBE aka "Molly" Green (27 July 1913 – 19 April 2004) was an English headteacher who led Kidbrooke School, the first purpose-built comprehensive school in London. Life Green was born in Wellingborough to Rose Margaret (born Gibbs) and Edwin George Green. Her father was a solicitor's clerk. Her schooling was usual but she was a linguist and studied modern languages at Westfield College, University of London. One of her first teaching jobs was at William Hulme's Grammar School in Manchester where she took the classes of a teacher who was away in the war. From there she obtained her first leadership post as head of Colston's Girls' School in Bristol. She was there until 1954 when she took the job of leading Kidbrooke School, the first purpose-built comprehensive school in London. She was not an educationalist or an intellectual, she would think and then do. She relied on her own experience and common sense to decide the right path. She did keep the accent from her former school and she aimed to deliver grammar style education. She would drive to work and leave the car for the staff to park it, and then don her academic gown to lead whole school assemblies of 2,000 girls. Green was later described as "the last of the great 'spinster headmistresses': one of the indomitable women who took command of Britain's wartime and postwar schools, spurred on by the revolutionary changes of the 1944 Education Act".