Draft talk:Christopher Potter (headmaster)

Conflict of interest declaration

I, TepidAccount, am a member of the subject's family. I have written this article in good faith, following WP:COI and WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY by analogy: every substantive statement is cited to a published, independent source; nothing rests on private knowledge; and I have deliberately routed the article through Articles for Creation rather than creating it directly in mainspace, so that an uninvolved reviewer makes the call on notability and tone. I would welcome scrutiny on both. Where family-held documents are cited (the funeral address and a family-prepared obituary), they are used only for uncontroversial biographical detail, never to establish notability. TepidAccount (talk) 20:18, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Notability rationale

The subject meets WP:BASIC (significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources) and arguably WP:ANYBIO point 1 (a well-known and significant award/honour is a contributory, not decisive, factor here — the OBE alone is not relied upon).

Two pieces of significant coverage about the subject personally:

• Chris Woodhead, "This place can transform lives", The Daily Telegraph (Weekend), 18 August 2001, p. 34 — a full-page profile of Potter and his school by a former HM Chief Inspector of Schools, in a national newspaper. Independent of the subject.
• Mike Pitts, "My archaeology: Toasting the ancient Brits", British Archaeology 190 (May–June 2023), pp. 48–49 — a two-page feature interview in the Council for British Archaeology's national magazine. (Note: the interviewer was a former pupil, but the piece carries substantial independent editorial framing and the magazine is a reliable, independent publisher; treated with appropriate care.)

Sustained coverage across more than two decades in which the subject is the named, quoted protagonist of stories of genuine educational-policy significance (the rescue of a near-derelict state boarding school; its 1989 conversion as one of the first grant-maintained schools in England; its repeated appearance at or near the top of the national GCSE league tables 1995–1998):

• The Guardian, 29 June 1993 (state boarding feature, Potter quoted as authority)
• The Sunday Telegraph, 24 April 1994 (ditto)
• The Birmingham Post, front page, 20 November 1996 (school second-best comprehensive in England)
• The Daily Telegraph, 18 November 1997 ("State boarding school tops class")
• The Express, 1 December 1998 (school tops GCSE tables)
• plus the Birmingham Evening Mail (1979; 1989), Stourbridge News (1991; 1996; 1998; 2001), Birmingham Post (1992; 1993; 1995), Dudley Chronicle (1998), Express & Star (2001).

Independent confirmation of the archaeology-teaching claim and the subject's standing: the British Archaeology interview; his entry in Who's Who 2000 (A & C Black), p. 1643; and the documented careers of his former pupils (e.g. Sue Hamilton, director of the UCL Institute of Archaeology).

Obituary: The Times, 7 October 2023 — a Register ("Readers' Lives") obituary, written and edited by The Times from information supplied by the family. It is a reliable source with partial editorial independence; it is used here for biographical detail and treated conservatively, rather than as a primary plank of notability.

Source assessment table

Source	Independent?	Significant coverage?	Reliable?	Counts toward notability?
Woodhead, Daily Telegraph 2001	Yes	Yes (full page, about subject)	Yes	Yes
Pitts, British Archaeology 190 (2023)	Partial (interviewer a former pupil)	Yes (2-page feature)	Yes	Yes (with care)
Guardian 1993 / Sunday Telegraph 1994	Yes	Partial (subject as quoted authority)	Yes	Partial
Birmingham Post / Daily Telegraph / Express league-table reports 1995–98	Yes	Partial (about school; subject named/quoted)	Yes	Partial
Who's Who 2000, p. 1643	Yes	Partial (selective entry)	Yes	Partial (supporting)
The Times obituary 2023 (Register / Readers' Lives)	Partial (Times-written, family-supplied)	Yes	Yes	Partial
Funeral address; other family-held papers	No	Yes	Partial (primary)	No (detail only)
Companies House; school histories	Yes	No	Yes	No (verification only)

Notes for reviewers and future editors

A few things that will save time:

• Offline sources. Most newspaper citations are to print pages verified via newspaper archives (newspapers.com / British Newspaper Archive); precise dates, page numbers and bylines are given throughout per WP:SOURCEACCESS. Happy to supply scans on request.
• Two reconciliations are flagged in hidden HTML comments in the article body:
  1. OBE year. The Times says 2000; the subject said "this year" in Feb 2001; Who's Who 2000 (compiled 1999) shows no OBE. All consistent with the 2001 New Year Honours (gazetted 30 December 2000). A Gazette citation would settle it — help welcome.
  2. Chairmanship body. Stourbridge News calls it the "State Boarding Schools Organisation"; The Times calls it the "Boarding Schools Association"; Who's Who gives "State Boarding Inf. Service, 1996–98", which the article follows.
• The Elms chairmanship. Companies House confirms the governorship/directorship and its 1984–2013 span; for the chairmanship specifically, an ISI/Ofsted inspection report or the school's annual report would be the ideal secondary confirmation.
• Grandford excavation report. Cited to Who's Who as 1980; if anyone can confirm the actual imprint (it may be a British Museum Occasional Paper, c. 1982), please cite the monograph directly.
• De-orphaning. Once accepted, incoming links would sit naturally at Old Swinford Hospital, The Elms School, Colwall, Ardingly College, and the articles on former pupils (Sue Hamilton (archaeologist), Robert Foley (academic), Mike Pitts (archaeologist)). The subject is also a fit for "Notable people" sections at those schools.
• BLP on living relatives. Five children are mentioned only as a number, except where independent sources already name them; please keep it that way.
• What this article does NOT claim. It does not rest on the OBE for notability, does not use the family documents for any contested point, and does not assert the "first school to teach archaeology" claim in Wikipedia's voice — that is attributed to British Archaeology.

Thanks for reviewing.