Eight schools across four continents. Each one a different context, a different challenge, and a different version of the same question: what does this community need, and how fast can we build it?
The Foundation · From Good to Great
First Headship
Manchester, England
My first headship was in a highly select Cheshire village, home to many of the world's leading premier league footballers. The challenge was to take a school that could easily coast, and develop a level of ambition that would propel it into the highest categories of performance. Within three years we were judged 'Outstanding' and featured in The Sunday Times top 50 schools in the UK.
Ofsted OutstandingSunday Times Top 50Good to Great
Beyond Outstanding · Inspiring Innovation
School of the Future
Birmingham, England
The school was already internationally renowned when I was appointed its Headteacher, so the challenge was how to take it 'beyond outstanding'. The drive, through innovation, to new heights of excellence and groundbreaking work in new technologies, brought prime ministers, secretaries of state and hundreds of Principals every week to our school to learn from what we were doing to make tomorrow's school for the students of today.
I worked with schools across Melbourne, Tasmania, Boston USA and Cape Town introducing leaders and teachers to the delights and challenges of working with New Technologies to inspire great learning.
Beyond OutstandingNational Showcase SchoolTechnology InnovationGovernment Visits
System Leadership · From One to Many
Executive Headteacher & National Leader of Education
London, England
Three Outstanding headships led to designation as a National Leader of Education, one of a small number from England's 25,000 serving principals. The role shifted from leading one school to leading across a federation of schools and supporting hundreds of schools in the most challenging circumstances nationally. This was also the period of my deepest policy engagement: advising three successive Secretaries of State, contributing to the Cambridge Primary Review, and working with two Deputy Prime Ministers' Offices on Early Years education and national engagement with New Technologies.
I also worked with the National College of School Leadership leading SLICT (Strategic Leadership of ICT) workshops around the country and with the UK Government on the £55 Billion BSF (Building Schools of the Future) programme. Additionally I was a regular contributor to the Westminster Education Forum, debating the role of new technologies in education. I was appointed a Director of the SSAT (The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust), representing 25,000 schools across the UK, and contributed to the 2013 review of the National Curriculum for England and Wales.
Ofsted Outstanding ×3National Leader of EducationCambridge Primary ReviewGovernment AdvisoryWestminster Education ForumSSAT DirectorBuilding Schools for the Future
Apex of International Education · Singapore
International K-12 Principal
Singapore · Nord Anglia Education
As a result of implementing radical curriculum innovation and achieving world class IB results, the school tripled its enrolment and EBITDA over a 2 year period. The school became the fastest growing within the world's leading global network of premium international schools.
Enrolment TripledEBITDA TripledWorld Class IB ResultsFastest Growing in NetworkNord Anglia Education
Best of the Best · Shanghai
Leading International K-12 Principal
Shanghai, China · Nord Anglia Education
The school was a large, complex school, achieving record IBDP grades and record university acceptances to the world's top institutions in Oxbridge and Ivy League. The school became the global leading K-12 school for STEM/STEAM education, working in collaboration with MIT. Commercially, the school maintained the highest EBITDA margin of all schools within the world's highest performing, publicly listed global school group.
Record IBDP ResultsOxbridge & Ivy LeagueHighest EBITDA in GroupGlobal STEM/STEAM LeaderMIT CollaborationNord Anglia Education
Most Competitive Global Market
Executive Principal
Dubai, UAE · Fortes Education
Appointed with an ambitious mandate to develop the school into one of the leading schools in the Middle East and Asia. Developed an expansive signature programme suite, STEAM centres and achieved 'world best' academic results, record IBDP results in global top 80 schools, and outstanding inspection results.
Global Top 80 IBDPOutstanding InspectionSTEAM CentresSignature Programme SuiteWorld Best Results
Now · Systems Leadership
Director of Education
Dubai, UAE · Fortes Education
As Director of Education at Fortes Education, the role encompasses strategic oversight of academic performance across K-12 schools spanning EYFS through to Sixth Form, serving thousands of students across British and IB curricula. The scope is total: curriculum development, inspection readiness, staff professional development, operational leadership, and the strategic direction that determines whether a school group competes or leads.
This has also been the period of my deepest intellectual and entrepreneurial output. The AI work has become a defining strand of my focus. A body of 27+ published articles explores the intersection of artificial intelligence, pedagogy, ethics, and school leadership, written in a narrative, research-heavy style that has built a growing international readership.
Keynotes at GITEX Global, the World Education Summit, British Schools in the Middle East (BSME), GESS Dubai, the Outstanding Schools Middle East conference, the Middle East Schools Leadership Conference, Dubai AI Conference, the NEASC AI Conference, the Abu Dhabi Teaching Conference, and the BSME Principals Conference, have established a platform as one of the leading voices on AI in education in the region.
Most ambitiously, the development of an Intelligent Tutoring System built on a two-layer deterministic-and-LLM architecture with 31 configurable parameters, represents a genuine attempt to build what schools actually need from AI, rather than what technology companies want to sell them.
The question that drives everything in my current work is: how do you lead a school into the AI era without losing the things that make it a school and that support genuine learning?
Director of Education27+ Published ArticlesAI Strategy & IntegrationGITEX Global SpeakerWorld Education Summit
