New Chairman for HMC

6 January 2006

Andrew Boggis, Warden (Headmaster) of Forest School in Snaresbrook, east London, is the new Chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference  (1st January 2006) taking over from Dr Priscilla Chadwick, Principal of Berkhamsted Collegiate School in Hertfordshire, the first female Chairman.

The Headmasters' and Headmistress' Conference (HMC), established in 1869, represents the headteachers of some 250 leading independent day and boarding schools, educating over 130,000 boys and 50,000 girls in the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic. It also has strong international links in over 25 other countries.

"During my Chairmanship," said Mr Boggis, "I shall be working with colleagues in the other independent heads' associations to achieve an acceptance by the government of our proper place in Education UK: providers of some of the best schooling in the world. Our knowledge economy is heavily dependent upon the independent sector. We carry the flag for sport, music, drama, art, modern languages, mathematics and community service. I will be asking the Government to take pride in and celebrate - rather than disparage - our sector and to enter real partnership schemes which match the rhetoric with cash.

"HMC will play its part in continuing the pressure on the government to take its remaining tanks off our university quadrangles: there is no place for targets, benchmarks and quotas for the different sectors as far as university admission is concerned. We seek open access to our universities for all pupils regardless of schooling, and a proper axis between good schools and good universities; we do not want any ham-fisted attempts to equate ‘independent school' with ‘socially and economically privileged'.

"Curriculum change is an area that requires patience, greater time and more thought: Tomlinson was dismissed too quickly. Much of the work that needs to be done is at the micro level: more efficient exam boards, more accurate marking, better consultation with teachers, and well-trained, better-rewarded markers.

"I look forward to working with Brenda Despontin, incoming President of GSA and other colleagues under the ISC umbrella, to make the case for a standing commission on education, offering the opportunity for much longer-term planning not constrained by the timescales of parliamentary sessions. Education is too important a matter to be left entirely to the politicians.

"HMC schools are independently minded places run by people who are also very publicly minded. That they comprise such a variety of types of schools across the UK and Ireland and that levels of parental satisfaction are so high gives HMC schools the right to play a pivotal role in Education UK. As Chairman I look forward to 2006 and its associated challenges with keen anticipation."

Biography
Andrew Boggis (51) has been the Warden of Forest School since 1992. He was educated at Marlborough College and at New College, Oxford where he read Modern Languages. He took his PGCE at King's College, Cambridge before teaching English for a year in Austria. Returning to the UK, he became Assistant Master at Hitchin Boys' School, a state comprehensive. In 1979, he moved to Eton, first as Assistant Master teaching Modern Languages, then as Master-in-College, housemaster to the 70 King's Scholars. Mr Boggis has been a Governor of The Skinners' Company's School for Girls, a Business & Enterprise College in Hackney since 1997. He is an Extra Member of the Court of the Skinners' Company. He was a Member of the Court of Essex University until earlier this year. Andrew is married to Fiona and they have two girls, Rosie (18) and Lucy (17), and a son, Edmund (14).

Forest School
Forest educates pupils from 4 to 18. There are 600 boys and 600 girls, of whom 1,000 are in the 11+ senior sections. The school has a so-called ‘diamond' structure: boys and girls are educated together to the age of 11 and then in single-sex sections from age 11 to age 16. The 260-strong Sixth Form is coeducational. The school was founded in 1834 as a Church of England foundation. Sited in north-east London, the school has a very diverse and multicultural profile. 99% of pupils receive grades A*-C at GCSE and 70% of A-Level grades are at A or B.