Islanders on Foula, one of the UK’s most remote inhabited islands, are looking for a new headteacher to run their tiny primary school, with a register of just four pupils and another child in its nursery.
Foula, an island of 4.9 sq miles with a permanent population of 28 people, lies 16 miles to the west of Shetland and vies with Fair Isle, which is 44 miles to the south, as the most isolated and exposed inhabited place in Britain.
Its popular headteacher, Beverley McPherson, described by one islander on Facebook as “truly fantastic”, has retired after four years running the island’s single-room school.
Sitting on the eastern side of the island, protected from the Atlantic weather by Foula’s highest hill, the school house also features a nursery, kitchen, community hall and solar array – part of Foula’s off-grid renewables supply.
The job specification promises a salary of £61,374, relocation expenses and a three-bedroom house. The advertisement placed by Shetland Islands council reads: “Are you a headteacher or aspiring headteacher looking for an exciting new challenge? Do you dream of being part of a friendly, dynamic island community with a slower pace of life?
“Qualities we are looking for in the successful candidate are: a can-do attitude, vision, energy, initiative, good communication skills and self-discipline.”
Other islanders work part-time at the school covering early years, art and information technology. On Foula, as on many other Scottish islands, residents take on a multitude of jobs, while teenage children live off the island during term-time, staying in a hostel in Lerwick to attend Shetland’s main secondary school.
Ken Gear, father to two of the children at the primary school, is an engineer for a Dutch company, but also serves as an auxiliary firefighter for the island’s airport, a peripatetic repairman for the island’s water and electricity supply, as well as farming 50 sheep and running a self-catering holiday let.
Life on Foula is not for everyone, Gear said, “but for the kind of people who like this kind of thing, it can be idyllic”.
“You need to be quite independent to live in a place like Foula. You need to be a self-starter. We have quite a strong community and certainly help each other when needed, but at the same time, part of the success of the Foula community is that people are able to look after themselves. There is that duality.”
Famous among birdwatchers for its great skua, puffins, razorbills and guillemots, the name Foula derives from the Old Norse for “bird island”: Fugley. On its western edge, high and precipitous cliffs guard the island against intense Atlantic storms. They include the Kame, which at 365 metres is the second tallest sea cliff in the UK.
It has one particular quirk: by tradition, Foula operates to the old Julian calendar and celebrates Christmas Day – when all the islanders gather together – on 6 January. New Year’s Day falls on 13 January each year.
There are downsides compared with living in more populated places, Gear said, “but living here we think the wonderful freedoms and closeness to nature that you can experience growing up on Foula far outweigh those downsides”.
The island is served by daily flights from Tingwall airport near Lerwick on Shetland’s mainland during the summer, at a return cost of £46 for adult islanders, and three ferries a week during the summer. “We look quite isolated, but actually we’re reasonably well-connected, certainly more so that you would expect looking at the map,” Gear said.
