Aatif Hassan was expelled from school. He has dyslexia and ADHD. He now runs one of the largest private education groups in the UK — Dukes Education — with over twenty UK schools, twenty-five international schools across Europe, and a deliberate refusal to use the word 'SEND'. This conversation is about why.
Aatif Hassan is founder, Chair and CEO of Dukes Education and founder of Cavendish Education, the fastest-growing group for children with what Aatif calls 'unique learning profiles'. He sits on boards for charities supported by the King and Queen, including the British Asian Trust. Before founding Dukes he worked in the military, in the City, in banking and in private equity — and none of those careers prepared him for the morning he stood outside a derelict former police dog school in Girton holding the keys and burst into tears at the weight of what he'd taken on.
Why he has never been able to answer the 'is there a number' question on selling Dukes — and what permanent capital allows him to build that fixed-life investors cannot
The deliberate refusal of the word 'SEND' — why Cavendish uses 'unique learning profiles' and why the language of labels cuts against what the schools are actually trying to do
The 100% mission at Cavendish — that every child ends up in sustained employment, vocational training or university
Dyslexia as a superpower — simplicity of thought, and the 'if I can't explain it, nobody else can understand it' principle that shapes how the group is run
The fifteen-captains-on-the-pitch test — why he believes any of his top team could run the organisation, and how he built toward that
Why he hired Professor Mark Bailey (former high master of St Paul's), David Goodhue (Latymer) and Libby Nicholas (GDST, MAT CEO) — and what 'positive capitalism' had to demonstrate to win them over
How Dukes and Cavendish got their names — Cavendish Road, Dukes Meadows in Chiswick, and the letter from the Queen granting permission to use a royal name
From care homes and vets to education — why the loss of his older son, losing his mother young, and being thrown out of school himself made education the only direction he could go
The Duke's Diploma and Duke's Plus — an original character-and-virtues curriculum sitting alongside IB and A-level, and the 'cradle to Cambridge' vision for developing the whole child outside the classroom as well as inside it COVID as a near-death moment — paying staff 100% when 80% was the option, the bank negotiations that ran into the small hours, and the 'Hartington School' homeschooling assembly he wrote every night at eight o'clock
The £114 million Institute of Education investment, Cardiff Sixth Form College (named best in the world by A-level results), and the £100m Cardiff Bay project being built while everyone else is running out of the UK over VAT
The Portugal expansion — ULIS (United Lisbon International School), British School in Lisbon, Braga and Porto — and how an open-armed welcome broke his 'two-hour rule'
The world's first ski-in ski-out school in Verbier — European Champions, 250 pupils, 3,000 metres above sea level
The acquisition that almost broke the company — Cardiff Sixth Form College, taken on at Charities Commission and Welsh Government request with no access to the P&L
Episode 1 opens THE BUILDERS block of Series One — and the entire series.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and everywhere via Podbean
Full episode and transcript: https://podcast.co/b2educationunpacked
EdTech Sales Mastery course: https://seventhsibling.co.uk/self-paced-courses
Website: https://seventhsibling.co.uk
