Morgan HIgh School, Harare, Zimbabwe

This school was named after Leonard Ray Morgan, the first permanent Secretary for Education in the Federation of Rhodesia & Nyasaland. Morgan, whose father was a Sergeant in the Royal Artillery, was born 1894 in Montrose, Scotland. He emigrated to Rhodesia at about the age of eight years and spent the rest of his life there. He was educated at Prince Edward High School in Salisbury, Rhodesia. He served with the British forces in the East Africa campaign in the 1914-18 World War, and possibly with the Royal Flying Corps in France.. He subsequently won a Rhodes Scholarship to St. John's College, University of Oxford, where he obtained a degree in civil engineering. During his time at Oxford he was a close personal friend of the poet, Robert Graves (a fellow student at St. John's College) with whom he remained in contact for the remainder of his life. While in England he met, and subsequently married, a Swiss French governess, working for Lord Halifax, Mlle Madeleine ('Madi') Petitmaitre, the daughter of a butcher from Yverdon in the Canton de Vaud. They returned to Rhodesia where he took up a schools career as a mathematics teacher in preference to the nomadic life of a civil engineer in the African bush. He advanced rapidly and was successively Headmaster of a number of famous Rhodesian schools, including Milton High School in Bulawayo, Chaplin High School in Gwelo (where he was Headmaster to the future Prime Minister of Rhodesia, Ian Smith) and Prince Edward High School in Salisbury, before being promoted as the first permanent Secretary for Education in the Federal Government. Morgan modelled the Rhodesian school system on the English grammar schools and they were considered to be some of the finest state schools in the world at the time. He also played a prominent role in the advancement of African (i.e. black) education during the years of Federation (1953-1961). Morgan died in 1967, survived by his wife and two daughters, Anne (b.1926) and Denise Helene (b.1931). Morgan was awarded a CBE in recognition of his achievements in 1956.

SUPPLEMENT TO THE LONDON GAZETTE, 2 JANUARY, 1956, p22

http://www.gazettes-online.co.uk/issues/40669/supplements/22/page.pdf