Heads & Tales

Bill Kuhn is head of school at Birch Wathen Lenox, a K-12 school on Manhattan's Upper East Side. He came to education late after a career in finance, and fell in love with explaining things to kids while tutoring on the side. In this episode, Bill explains why BWL puts "constructive dialogue" at the heart of everything, from kindergarten debates about ice cream flavours through to upper school students tackling complex opposing viewpoints. He shares his view that technology has "terrible default settings" and argues that schools should tackle controversial topics head on. His controversial opinion: protecting students from discomfort actually makes them weaker, not safer.

Susannah Hardyman MBE is CEO of Impetus, the organisation that finds the best education and youth employment charities and helps them scale. She founded Action Tutoring from her kitchen in 2011, grew it to 7,000 pupils a year, then found herself advising government on the National Tutoring Programme when COVID hit. In this episode, Susannah reflects on what that whirlwind taught her about implementation, shares her controversial opinion that we've never properly acknowledged how badly we let down young people during the pandemic, and explains why kindness is an underrated leadership value.

Melody Lang isn't a head teacher. She's an investor, a mathematician and an engineer who's spent 15 years figuring out what actually works in EdTech and what's just noise. In this episode, she shares the red flags she looks for in products, explains why she thinks traditional exams are testing the wrong things, and doesn't hold back on higher education: the middle tier is in trouble, and maybe you shouldn't bother going to uni at all. She also delivers a warning every parent needs to hear: AI will make some young people smarter and others dumber, and the difference is in how they choose to use it.

Guðmundur Hegner Jónsson is the founding principal of Lisbon International School, a new values-driven school housed in a converted 1905 pasta factory. His path to education is unlike any other: he dug up Viking burials for Iceland's National Museum, trained as a bass vocalist at the Royal Academy of Music, and spent 20 years teaching across Serbia, China, the UAE and South Korea before becoming rector of UWC Red Cross Nordic. In this episode, Guðmundur explains the BOA principles at the heart of his new school, shares what it really means to give students voice rather than treating it as a tick-box exercise, and reflects on why education has become too exams-focused.

Toby Seth is Whitgift's 30th headmaster, back in his South London roots having been educated at Dulwich College. A linguist by training with a degree from Trinity Cambridge, he's held leadership roles at Wellington College, Godolphin and Latymer and Pocklington before returning south. Now midway through his first year at Whitgift, Toby shares his passionate case for languages as a way of becoming more human in an AI age, explains how sport can counter machismo in boys' schools and reflects on the strategic work underway to define Whitgift's vision for the future. He also offers a mantra for every educator: the child in front of you is the most precious thing in someone's world.

Toby Seth is Whitgift's 30th headmaster, back in his South London roots having been educated at Dulwich College. A linguist by training with a degree from Trinity Cambridge, he's held leadership roles at Wellington College, Godolphin and Latymer and Pocklington before returning south. Now midway through his first year at Whitgift, Toby shares his passionate case for languages as a way of becoming more human in an AI age, explains how sport can counter machismo in boys' schools and reflects on the strategic work underway to define Whitgift's vision for the future. He also offers a mantra for every educator: the child in front of you is the most precious thing in someone's world.

Jesse Elzinga has been head of Sevenoaks since 2020, leading one of the UK's flagship IB schools. A dual US-UK citizen raised on a farm outside Detroit, Jesse sold apples at farmers markets before winning a place at Harvard with a generous bursary, then a scholarship to Oxford. That journey drives his ambition to have one in three Sevenoaks students on a free or assisted place by the school's 600th anniversary in 2032. In this episode, Jesse makes a passionate case for the IB as the best 16-18 education in the world, explains why dropping maths at 16 is not okay, and delivers a surprising controversial opinion: GCSEs are actually great.

James Monaghan is the CEO and founding principal of GEMS School of Research and Innovation, the group's new flagship in Dubai which opened in September 2025. With 30 years in international education spanning the UAE, UK, USA and South Korea, this is the third school James has opened from scratch. In this episode, he explains what makes launching a school so uniquely challenging, why teacher training hasn't kept pace with technology, and how SRI is investing in dedicated innovation time for staff. James shares his controversial view that busy students are the most successful, and describes taking pupils to build biogas units in rural Nepal with no wifi, no phones and no air conditioning.

Helen Pike is the first female master in Magdalen College School's 500-year history. Originally from Preston and the first in her family to attend university, she read history at Christ Church, Oxford, just 300 yards from where she now leads one of Britain's top day schools. In this episode, Helen shares what she tells sixth form girls about imposter syndrome and why confidence is the trait most correlated with success. She explains why she asks prospective parents to find out how much a school sings together, offers advice for aspiring heads on building teams, and delivers her controversial opinion: not everybody can be good at everything, and accepting that might be a relief rather than a burden.

Richard Jones never planned to be a teacher. He studied economics, worked in recruitment, rented out custom-wrapped camper vans to backpackers, and only discovered teaching after spending a week shadowing his best friend in a classroom. Now he's head of Bryanston, one of Britain's most distinctive schools, having made the leap from senior deputy to headship in just 15 months during Covid. In this episode, Richard explains the Bryanston method of giving students real independence from Year 9, shares his frustration with league tables that reduce schools to exam results and makes the case for scrapping school uniform: "Instead of saying tuck your shirt in, I'm saying how's your day going?"