Wanted: new headmaster for Gordonstoun

GOODBYE Mr Pyper. The headmaster of Gordonstoun, one of Scotland's most elite schools, has announced his retirement after 20 years service during which he reformed what the Prince of Wales famously branded "a hellhole" and ushered in a new age of citizenship.

The boarding school in Moray was once synonymous with cold showers and early morning runs but now has a softer image which attracts the parents of 600 pupils – its highest school roll yet – with many willing to pay as much as 27,000 per year.

Under the tenure of Mark Pyper the school's "zero tolerance" drug policy, which had meant a single offence resulted in immediate expulsion, was reformed as "unrealistic, unreasonable and unhelpful". Instead Mr Pyper steered parents away from "hanging and flogging" towards what he described in an article as "a policy of reasonableness and empathy".

At times he courted controversy, as when he gave a lecture to the school one week after the 11 September, 2001 attacks in New York, where he had been visiting, and described drinking beer and vodka for eight hours as he watched the tragedy unfold. At the assembly he told pupils he saw images of the attacks "ad nauseam" through a "haze of Bud Light and Stoli".

Yesterday, the school launched an international search for his successor, who will be announced in May, allowing Mr Pyper, 62, to support the new headteacher for a further six months until he retires at the end of the year.

He said: "It has been an interesting time. When I started Margaret Thatcher was still prime minister, laptops were virtually unheard of and IT was what we did as a subject, but not a way we communicated with each other. It has been a fascinating time. The other great development in terms of education is young people learning to consider their place in the world through citizenship courses."

The school was founded as an international school in 1934 by the German educator, Dr Kurt Hahn, who based the curriculum on his belief in the importance of community service and outdoor exercise. Previous pupils include the novelist William Boyd and three generations of the Royal Family, including the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles and the Princess Royal's daughter Zara Phillips.

Today pupils continue to carry out international service attending charity projects in Romania and Thailand as well as taking part in the school's volunteer fire service and training yacht, the Ocean Spirit of Moray.

The contribution that pupils make to the local and wider community through the school's services drew particular praise from the schools HM Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) last year. Their monitoring report judged Gordonstoun to be "outstanding or sector leading" in two out of five categories, with the remainder judged to be "very good".

Under Mr Pyper's stewardship the school has also increased the number of scholarship pupils with between 15-20 pupils attending free of charge while one third of pupils receive some discount in fees.

Mr Pyper said he had tried to change the perception of the school during his tenure: "There are some people who still think its very old fashioned. I took the view when I came here that I wanted to change that, but not by conducting an advertising campaign, but just by continuing and developing the education that we have."

Yesterday, the chairman of the board of governors, Professor Bryan Williams, said: "This is one of the top education jobs in the country and we expect to attract strong competition. Mark Pyper has been an outstanding headmaster and will be a hard act to follow, but we hope to find somebody who has an equal level of commitment to the school and its founding principles."