From the Number 13 bus to the principal’s office, Ali Kirkman on her journey back to Hills Road

Ali Kirkman, our Principal, is a local. Before Hills, she attended Abington Primary School and then Linton Village College. Being the first member of her family to enjoy a post-16 education, and coming to Hills Road in 1991, she describes the allure of the “bright lights of Cambridge” and a college that really “opened doors” for her.

Hills Road in 1991

Ali was at Hills in the 90s and when she first arrived on the Number 13 bus from Linton, there were only 800 students across both years. Even this number felt massive for someone coming from the comparatively small schools of Abington and Linton. She jokes that nowadays, the 3,000 students at Hills Road make the College feel like the wardrobe from Narnia – “how do 3,000 students fit here?”. Ali described to me how the site has developed since she was a student. While we still have the beautiful library’s mezzanine, there were temporary classrooms where the G Block now stands. It is now named after the principal Ali had at the time - Colin Greenhalgh.

As a student, Ali was very involved in the College’s community; she described singing carols in the St John’s College chapel with the choir. She was also very involved in languages (she studied both A level German and French) during her time here and went on the very first German exchange to Hamburg, organised by Jill Phelps (who still teaches German here to this day). This was a two-week work experience trip, working in a children’s home with kids who didn’t speak any English.

Figure 1: Ali (centre) with friends, outside Hills Road

A less typical journey

Straight after Hills Road, Ali went back to Germany, this time for a full voluntary year in Germany, which gave her a taste for living and working overseas. She still wonders whether she would have come back at all had she not had a place at the University of Oxford waiting!

At Oxford, she read languages, starting a career that combined all her interests: education, language and travel. During her degree, she spent a year working at a school in France, teaching English to pupils in a Lycée. After graduating, she went back to Germany, to Heidelberg, where she taught English and qualified as an English language teacher.

That set her on a worldwide journey for about 20 years; from watching the first sunrise of the new millennium in New Zealand to working and training teachers across Malaysia, Germany, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia. Along the way, she led language schools, qualified as a modern languages teacher and developed a passion for coaching – something that would later draw her back to Hills Road.

She moved back to the UK in 2017, as Head of Teaching and Learning at an international school in Oxford, and then came home to Cambridge in December 2019, just before the pandemic. Then, a year later, she saw a job advert for the Assistant Principal role at her old sixth form college, Hills Road. Joining as Assistant Principal for Curriculum Development, taking over HR as Vice Principal about three years later and now, becoming Principal.

Why come back to Hills Road?

I asked Ali, “You could have taught in any school. What made you come back to Hills Road specifically?” Ali explained that until she saw the job listing for the Assistant Principal role, she had not realised the impact that Hills had had on her life. “[It] was that feeling of wow, this place did for me what we say we do [in teaching]. It opened doors for me academically, personally - in terms of the travel I’ve done - and professionally. So, it was a feeling that this is a chance to give something back.” Ali also talked about the value of travel, and how being “overseas for nearly 20 years and away from Cambridge for even longer” gave her professional satisfaction – this being “a chance now, full circle, to come back home.”

Advice for first-generation students

As the first in her family to go into post-16 education, I asked Ali if she had any advice for first-generation university students. She encourages them to “keep asking questions. Don’t be afraid to say, I don’t know how this works. Find people who can help you. Take all the opportunities you can, even if you don’t feel 100% ready. You’re not the only one who feels that way, even if other people are talking a bit more confidently than you.” She also described just how brave that task is. “Young people in that position should already feel really proud of what they’re doing, because they’re trailblazing. They might be the first person to take that path in their family, but I bet they won’t be the last.”

Care and candour

Ali described two of the values she wants to hold herself and the College to, as being care and candour. I asked her what that means to her day-to-day. Care, she told me, means “listening to people, asking questions to find out what’s going on, being curious rather than judgemental […] I think we understand people much better when we take the time to hear their stories. It’s about caring about people, being interested in them, noticing if somebody might need some support.” Candour is about honesty and not being afraid to have difficult conversations. “Sometimes we need to talk about the elephant in the room! But we can do that with kindness, respect and a genuine intention to make things better, rather than to make someone feel worse.” She closed by saying “care without candour probably means avoiding difficult truths. And candour without care can feel really harsh - like a sledgehammer! Day-to-day, I hope people at Hills Road feel listened to, respected and that they can speak honestly – even when we don’t all agree.”

Ali noted in closing that perhaps the most striking thing is what hasn’t changed; despite the enormous changes in the world around us, and in the College’s buildings, technology and size, there is still that same sense of ambition, curiosity, community and kindness. These values are the same values that made Hills Road work for her, and still stand very much at the heart of our community just as they did in 1991!

Figure 2: Ali Kirkman, Principal of Hills Road Sixth Form College