Leadership
Six years in academic leadership across three schools. The programmes and the results matter, and they are set out below. But the part that decides whether any of it lasts is the relationships: colleagues who are growing, parents who trust what you are doing, and students who are known individually.
How I lead
Most of what makes a department work happens in the interactions between people rather than in the job titles. Spillane et al. (2001) describe leadership as a practice stretched across people and their situation, not something one person does to a team. That is why I build systems with colleagues rather than for them.
The second half of my thinking is about why people stay. Greenleaf (1977) argued that a leader serves first, and that the test is whether the people being led grow. In schools this is measurable. Ingersoll (2001) found that inadequate administrative support and limited input into decision-making drive teacher turnover, and Ingersoll and Smith (2003) found mentoring and regular communication with a senior colleague improve retention. Chapman (2025) reports the same pattern in independent schools, where feeling recognised and appreciated was decisive for teachers deciding whether to stay.
This is the thinking behind my record rather than a description added afterwards. At CBIS I ran professional development for newly qualified and untrained science teachers, and the whole team stayed that year. People stay when they are supported, listened to and valued.
When I took my first department leadership role, I could have written the unit plans and assessment routines myself and handed them over. I built them with the team instead. It took longer and it held, because the people using a system should have a hand in making it. Consistency is also a form of fairness: students deserve the same quality of planning and assessment whichever teacher they have.
At CBIS I ran a professional development programme for newly qualified and untrained science teachers, and not one member of the team left that year. At Merchiston I mentored three new teachers through curriculum implementation. I treat retention as a result of how people are supported, not as a target in itself.
The hardest part of running a year-long STEM club was not the teaching or the research design. It was bringing parents on board with an activity that had no immediate effect on grades. I learned to explain the purpose of enrichment as carefully as I plan it, and the results eventually made the case on their own.
Fifty students completed independent research projects under the programme I designed at SIFC, and the design question was never how to process them. It was how to make sure each one had a supervisor who knew their project, regular conversations and clear milestones. A 95% completion rate came from that, not from chasing deadlines.
As Director of Research at SIFC I designed the Extended Project Qualification programme end to end: supervision model, research-skills teaching, milestones and assessment, alongside data-driven assessment frameworks and cross-department alignment for science. As Head of Science at CBIS I standardised IB Diploma science across a team of six; as Subject Head of Biology at Merchiston, A Level Biology reached 100% A*–B.
A member of the IB Educator Network (IBEN), I examine DP Biology Paper 2, Extended Essays and Internal Assessment, and have examined Cambridge O Level Biology. Marking at this level shows you what strong work looks like across hundreds of schools, which is knowledge I bring back to my own teams and students.
Roles
An international senior high school in Bao’an District, Shenzhen, founded in 2004 by a team of Shenzhen University professors and among the city’s earliest providers of the AP curriculum. It serves roughly 300 students aged 14 to 18 in Grades 9 to 12, through an international high school division and an art high school division, offering AP, Pearson Edexcel IGCSE and A Level, and art pathways. Accreditations include Cognia, the College Board, Pearson Edexcel and Cambridge International.
A full British boarding school in Longhua, Shenzhen, opened in 2018 as the first overseas campus of Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh, founded in 1833. Pupils are aged 4 to 18; Years 1 to 9 follow the English National Curriculum and Years 10 to 13 take IGCSE and GCE A Level. The senior school is exclusively boarding, with accommodation for around 600, and the campus was built for up to 1,200 pupils.
A private bilingual international school in the Citic Lake community, Lishui Town, Nanhai District, Foshan. It has been an authorised IB World School since April 2019, offering the IB Diploma Programme alongside Cambridge IGCSE Co-ordinated Science, taught in English and Chinese.
Assessment
International Baccalaureate · IBEN
International Baccalaureate · IBEN
International Baccalaureate · IBEN
Cambridge International
See the year-by-year portfolio for the evidence behind each role. Open the portfolio →
References