Gordon Pollard was one of the boys at the South Shields High School for Boys from 1946 to 1953. On leaving, he attended Hatfield College, Durham, where he studied French and Music. During his time there he spent the 1955/6 academic year teaching conversational English at a school in Evreux, near Paris, and gained his BA in 1957. He stayed on a further year to get his Diploma of Education.

He left Hatfield College in 1957 and started work at the Mortimer Brinkburn County Secondary School, which he left in 1961 to join the staff of the South Shields Grammar-Technical School for Boys.