Quality & governance

A school is judged, rightly, on what happens in its classrooms. But a lesson only goes well because a great many other things went well first: the bus arrived, the laboratory was stocked, the safeguarding training was done, the teacher was recruited carefully and paid on time. My work, and the work of the group functions I lead, is that first list — so that our heads of school can give their attention to the second.

We run two schools of different national traditions on one campus, and we have chosen to run them as one operation: finance, human resources, legal and governmental affairs, procurement, transport, facilities, catering, security and IT are group functions serving both. That is a deliberate decision. It gives each school better economics than it could achieve alone, one consistent standard of policy, and a single point of accountability when something needs to be put right.

It also means the discipline has to be real. Accreditation is not a plaque; it is a cycle of self-study, external inspection, findings and required actions, and the operational evidence behind it has to exist on an ordinary Tuesday, not only in the month a visiting team is expected. The same is true of safeguarding, of licensing, and of the financial controls that let a family trust us with a year's fees.

What I hold this organisation to is simple enough to state and demanding to keep: that we answer families honestly and quickly, that we invest in the people we employ, and that we never let administrative convenience make a decision that should be made in a child's interest.