‘Whitcliffe Mount is a gem of a school’: Educating Yorkshire star is new headteacher at ‘brilliant’ Cleckheaton school

Whitcliffe Mount Academy welcomed Zoe Ali to the role in June before hitting the ground running for the new academic year at the start of September.

It has been a meteoric rise to the very top in education for the just-turned 40-year-old who only completed her teacher training 19 years ago. She started as a business studies teacher before gaining valuable experience as a head of year. A route to senior leadership followed, including four years at Thornhill Community Academy as deputy head.

And it was at the Dewsbury school where the Channel 4 cameras returned for another successful series of the educational documentary, which aired this time last year.

“What an experience it was,” Mrs Ali reminisced. “To have been a part of that second series was really enjoyable. What I loved about it the most was that it didn’t put any airs and graces on. It was a factual account of what it is like to work in a secondary school in 2026 and what it is like to be a teenager in 2026. It just felt really real.

“But when I went for that job initially it had not even registered in my mind that it was the school from Educating Yorkshire 13 years ago!

“It was only when I sat there on my interview morning and Matt Burton walked in to greet all the candidates that I thought he was familiar! It suddenly clicked!”

Thornhill and Whitcliffe are part of the same SHARE Multi-Academy Trust meaning regular contact with Mr Burton and her former colleagues will not stop.

“I absolutely adored my time at Thornhill,” Mrs Ali, who was brought up in the local area, said. “But when this opportunity came up, I couldn’t miss out on it. Whitcliffe is a gem of a school. I was born and bred around here, and I still live in the local area.

“It is a community which has always served me really well so it is really important to me that I now give back to the community that I am from. That is why this school feels so special to me.”

She added: “We are working together and there will always be a healthy competitiveness. We have started this year at Whitcliffe with incredible attendance and Thornhill colleagues have called to say ‘you are doing a great job’ and to keep it up.”

At the heart of every school are the hundreds of children who arrive to learn and to be motivated. At Thornhill, pupils were inspired by Mr Burton’s ‘be nice, work hard,’ motto. At Whitcliffe Mount Academy, Mrs Ali and her team have adopted their own uplifting ethos.

“We serve brilliant young people,” she smiled. “Being a headteacher is a really demanding job as you try to be all things to all people, and you go from dealing with curriculum conversations one minute to a pastoral one the next. You are constantly changing hats throughout the day.

“But what makes you keep coming back is the young people. They are brilliant. No two days are ever the same and you cannot predict what is going to happen. The students here have made me feel so welcome and I love going into classrooms throughout the day seeing the hard work that is going on.

“The staff have also made me feel incredibly welcome. It really is an exciting time to be at Whitcliffe.”

She added: “It was really important to me, as a new headteacher, that I wasn’t going to bring a set of values from my previous school and try to box them into Whitcliffe because Whitcliffe is a completely different entity and it’s brilliant in all its own right and ways.

“We came up with our WMA values which are ‘Work hard, Model kindness and Aim high.’ Those are values that can be a living and breathing entity around the school and something we expect all of our stakeholders to do all the time.

“It is not just about being a student and getting good grades. It’s about being a well-rounded individual who will leave here and be able to contribute successfully to society.”

Outside of the Turnsteads Avenue school, Mrs Ali is a mum to three daughters and was a keen dancer and performer, and she believes it is important the school community gets to know her.

“It is vital for relationships,” she said. “Whilst I am here to do a job and to make sure that everyone in this school can be the very best that they can be, at the end of the day I am a mum and a wife, and it is important they know my human side too.

“Some of the challenges that our community families are facing, we could be going through the same situation too, so it is important they get to see the human side of me. I have got three lovely girls, one has just started college, and two have just gone into Year 5. It is a busy household trying to juggle everything so I can really empathise with parents and families when we’re on the phone having conversations about the challenges that they might be facing - I know what that’s like, I get it, I understand it.

“I like to talk to the students about my hobbies. Some of our students are part of local dance studios and they want to talk to me about my dance background and organise shows in schools.”

And what about her proudest achievement of her career?

“I absolutely smashed the Fantasy Premier League staff and pupil league at Thornhill before I left,” she laughed. “As soon as I came here I said we’re getting a league and you’d better watch yourselves because I’m pretty good at this!

“When I’m on duty the students like to talk about the weekend’s football and where we are in the league. It’s those human touches that really matter.

“We are not an exam factory. Yes, we want the very best for our students and we will push them to be the best they can be academically and morally. But we also want that human and family aspect of school which is really important.”

She added: “I don’t underestimate what an important job this is. I want us to be a school which is open and honest and which has strong relationships with parents. We know the things that we need to work on but I feel strongly that we have got an excellent foundation in place to move forward from and I feel very lucky that we have got a staff body who are committed and driven and excited by the changes ahead and what that will look like.

“We are by no means the finished article but we are starting the new year on some excellent foundations. We had improved GCSE results in summer which were really encouraging, and we are all driven to keep on that improvement journey.”

Whitcliffe Mount Academy, which has waiting lists in nearly all year groups, will be hosting its annual open evening for prospective new Year 7 students for September 2027 on Wednesday, October 7, 5pm to 7.30pm.

The event is open to all Year 5 and 6 families, and Mrs Ali and her team are looking forward to welcoming the community into Whitcliffe Mount Academy for the event.