Team effort proves an all-round winner at Marches School

The Marches School, Oswestry, site staff are in effect the school caretakers, or janitors as they used to be known.

Together the five-man team has a wealth of skills that would be difficult to find in many much larger departments.

And for much of their time they are an invisible presence, ensuring that the secondary school, one of the largest in Shropshire, is in tip top condition.

The team is led by site manager Cliff Sagar, who as well as his own wide range of skills, oversees four others.

Tony Pritchard is a former Marches pupil and has worked there since leaving school. Dom MacAliece, Paul Trevor and Josh Pearce make up the rest of the team.

Josh originally joined the Marches School as an finance apprentice and when that contract came to attend he secured the job as caretaker, which was being advertised at the time.

Sarah Longville, headteacher at The Marches, said: "A school is a complex and difficult mechanism that, to the outside world, is represented by teachers and pupils learning and progressing day by day in classrooms.

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"To anyone working in a school however, the school is made of up of a wide range of people who ensure that children get the very best possible service to help them achieve everything they are capable of.

"Administrative staff, librarians, teaching assistants, catering staff, technicians, cover supervisors, mentors and site teams all provide invaluable support."

Mrs Longville said that every school has its own site team or caretakers which were responsible for the quality of the facilities that staff and pupils live in on a day-to-day basis.

"Here at The Marches we have a site team second to none. Often an invisible presence, the team ensures that fallen trees are removed, litter evaporates, examination desks and chairs materialise, rooms become pristinely decorated, floor tiles transform in colour and adhesion, lettings are managed and skips mysteriously empty with regularity. On top of that the grass gets cut, the astroturf is cleared and pitches marked.

"Always polite and hardworking our team distributes significant deliveries, removes and repositions furniture and the members are always at the end of the telephone when inevitable emergencies occur. They serve as chauffeurs, first response medics, linesmen, extreme cleaners and amateur detectives. Among the team we have carpentry, building, plumbing and electrical skills. "

"Over the past few years the team has helped out in some of our primary schools and ensured that our sixth form centre is ready for further expansion. They are truly our unsung heroes – we don't know what we would do without them."