New head relishes his role at Worthing High

Pan Panayiotou joined the school at the beginning of term after a four-and-a-half year stint as deputy head at Bitterne Park School, Southampton.

Describing his introduction to Worthing, he said: “I’ve been overwhelmed in terms of how amazing our students are”, adding: “There is an incredible group of staff and I’m very proud to be their headteacher.”

Mr Panayiotou added: “It has been very, very busy – as you expect it to be – but it’s also been a fantastic opportunity to actually start putting things in place and take the school to where it needs to be.”

The past five years have been eventful for Worthing High. In 2012, the school was rated ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted but, over the next four years, the efforts of staff, leaders and students saw that rating rise to ‘good’ with leadership and management ruled ‘outstanding’.

With those “fundamental educational building blocks” firmly in place, Mr Panayiotou said the task now was to make sure students made the best progress possible, while giving them the opportunity to “expand their horizons beyond the Worthing community – locally, nationally, internationally”.

While lauding the potential of his students to make their mark in the wider world, he also shared his excitement about a much more local adventure – the completion of the school’s new science block. The block is on schedule to be finished in May and is due to open to the students in September.

Mr Panayiotou said: “This will be a fantastic asset for the school and, when we open it, I think it’s going to be an opportunity for us to actually show what science teaching is all about.”

In addition to inspiring Worthing High’s budding scientists, engineers and mathematicians, he hoped the science block would do the same for other local primary and secondary schools.

Heading into his third week at the helm, Mr Panayiotou said: “I’m very honoured to be given the opportunity to be the new head, and excited about working with all my key stakeholders – my local primaries which I’m visiting now, and my local secondary colleagues, and meeting my parents and carers – and not forgetting the most important group, the students. They’re the phenomenal asset to the school and that’s what makes it a great school to be working in, and will be an even better school.”

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