Stockport Grammar Junior School Head Receives Queen’s Honour for Charity Work
The Headmaster of Stockport Grammar Junior School, Mr Tim Wheeler, has been awarded an MBE for services to charity and to education in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
In addition to his work at SGJS, Mr Wheeler has been the Chair of the Little Princess Trust, since 2011. The charity provides real hair wigs to children and young people with hair loss, and funds vital research into childhood cancer.
Mr Wheeler became involved with Little Princess Trust in 2009 whilst he was the Headmaster of Hereford Cathedral Junior School. The trust was established in 2006 in tribute to Hannah Tarplee, by her parents Wendy and Simon, their friends and Hereford Cathedral Junior School.
In the past decade, Mr Wheeler has run three full and two half marathons to raise funds and awareness of the charity, with the next in Cardiff in the autumn. Some of these have been run as ‘Scissorman’ – a logistical and aerodynamic challenge.
Mr Wheeler is also a member of the Council of the Independent Association of Prep Schools (IAPS) and has run courses and written education materials for them. He is a Trustee of the IAPS charity, iTrust, which provides bursaries to support children who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend independent schools and helps teachers in hardship.
Mr Wheeler said: “The letter informing me that I was to be awarded an MBE came as an enormous surprise and I am still coming to terms with the news. It is both a great honour and a very humbling experience to think that other people consider your contribution to the world to be worthy of recognition.”
“I have always considered it a great privilege to be involved in education and to play a part, however small, in shaping the lives of children. It has also been a privilege to be able to contribute to the work of an amazing charity, the Little Princess Trust, which not only impacts directly on the lives of children now but is also rapidly developing its research programme in an attempt to find kinder treatments for the future.”
