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Jodh Dhesi, Chief Executive Officer[/caption]
It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to write to you, my colleagues across the King Edward VI Foundation. Although I have been enjoying my remote meetings with individuals, sadly current circumstances mean that I am not able to visit our schools and to meet you in person. I hope that this brief introduction will give a little flavour of who you will be working with, pending my visits to you.
I had the good luck to grow up in Southend-on-Sea and spent a very happy childhood on the beach with my three siblings. We were not a well-off family, and I would have been classed as a disadvantaged student by today’s measures, but we had a real culture of reading and learning at home, which spurred me on academically. That is the kind of culture that my wife and I are trying to give to our son and daughter, aged five and three, so that whatever they choose to do and wherever they go, they will have a love of learning to help them along the way. Before having children, I used to pass my time in rowing and cycling. Family commitments give me less time for that now, but I still try to keep fit and to find time to indulge that love of reading that has stayed with me.
Some people have asked me what has made us pack up our bags to move from Dubai, the second city of the UAE, to the UK’s second city. What made us give up the sun to come back to England in a cold, dark December? Following a first conversation about the Foundation, my curiosity about the organisation grew and grew. As, through more conversations, I became more aware of its unique composition and mission, I became impressed with its history and excited by its potential. Following a rigorous and lengthy selection process, I knew that it was the right decision to ask my family to come back the four thousand miles to be here.
What I believe I bring to the Foundation is an understanding of our different types of school, having personally worked in grammar, comprehensive and independent schools. I also bring the experience of working in an executive role across a wide range of schools (our schools in the UAE offered four different curricula in schools ranging from 400 to 10,000 students). Perhaps most importantly, I bring a deep commitment to the Foundation’s values, particularly to “widen access and transform lives for all young people, no matter their background.”
When my family and I were walking in the Botanical Gardens near our temporary accommodation the other day, we saw that they were opened in 1832. It made me think of what a transformative time socially that decade was for the UK: the abolition of slavery, the first regulation of child labour, the first extension of voting rights, the first restrictions on blood sports, the first recognition of civil marriages, the establishment of the principle of state-assisted education, the end of the Oxford-Cambridge monopoly on granting degrees. One of my first tasks as the new CEO for the Foundation has been to look at the agenda for this decade, set out by our governors, and to see how we can turn that into reality. I hope that working with you, a community of hundreds of professionals and volunteers dedicated to the development of children and young people, we can play our part in making the 2020s a decade of progress educationally and socially for the thousands of students in our care. I look forward to doing so and to learning from you and with you as we go.
Jodh Dhesi, Chief Executive Officer[/caption]
It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to write to you, my colleagues across the King Edward VI Foundation. Although I have been enjoying my remote meetings with individuals, sadly current circumstances mean that I am not able to visit our schools and to meet you in person. I hope that this brief introduction will give a little flavour of who you will be working with, pending my visits to you.
I had the good luck to grow up in Southend-on-Sea and spent a very happy childhood on the beach with my three siblings. We were not a well-off family, and I would have been classed as a disadvantaged student by today’s measures, but we had a real culture of reading and learning at home, which spurred me on academically. That is the kind of culture that my wife and I are trying to give to our son and daughter, aged five and three, so that whatever they choose to do and wherever they go, they will have a love of learning to help them along the way. Before having children, I used to pass my time in rowing and cycling. Family commitments give me less time for that now, but I still try to keep fit and to find time to indulge that love of reading that has stayed with me.
Some people have asked me what has made us pack up our bags to move from Dubai, the second city of the UAE, to the UK’s second city. What made us give up the sun to come back to England in a cold, dark December? Following a first conversation about the Foundation, my curiosity about the organisation grew and grew. As, through more conversations, I became more aware of its unique composition and mission, I became impressed with its history and excited by its potential. Following a rigorous and lengthy selection process, I knew that it was the right decision to ask my family to come back the four thousand miles to be here.
What I believe I bring to the Foundation is an understanding of our different types of school, having personally worked in grammar, comprehensive and independent schools. I also bring the experience of working in an executive role across a wide range of schools (our schools in the UAE offered four different curricula in schools ranging from 400 to 10,000 students). Perhaps most importantly, I bring a deep commitment to the Foundation’s values, particularly to “widen access and transform lives for all young people, no matter their background.”
When my family and I were walking in the Botanical Gardens near our temporary accommodation the other day, we saw that they were opened in 1832. It made me think of what a transformative time socially that decade was for the UK: the abolition of slavery, the first regulation of child labour, the first extension of voting rights, the first restrictions on blood sports, the first recognition of civil marriages, the establishment of the principle of state-assisted education, the end of the Oxford-Cambridge monopoly on granting degrees. One of my first tasks as the new CEO for the Foundation has been to look at the agenda for this decade, set out by our governors, and to see how we can turn that into reality. I hope that working with you, a community of hundreds of professionals and volunteers dedicated to the development of children and young people, we can play our part in making the 2020s a decade of progress educationally and socially for the thousands of students in our care. I look forward to doing so and to learning from you and with you as we go. 
