Retiring Chair, Richard Gledhill, Looks Back On His 12 Years As A Governor Of Sedbergh School
Dear Friends,
As I come to the end of my term of office, as a Governor of Sedbergh School, and as Chair of the Board of the School, I wanted to write to our pupils and their parents, our staff and Governors, and all the friends of Sedbergh School to thank you for everything you do to make Sedbergh such a great school. You all are what makes Sedbergh so special.
My career at PwC was spent in London, Hong Kong and New York and, for much of that time, Sedbergh was far from my thoughts. I was slightly surprised in the summer of 2012 to be invited to a dinner for Winder House alumni from the 1960s. We had a great evening, and by the end of it I had agreed to become a Governor of the School.
My appointment was subject to a meeting with Hugh Blair, then Chairman of the Board, and Andrew Fleck, the Headmaster at that time. I was to be billeted in Lupton House, and was accosted by a girl standing near the front gate. I said that I was there to meet the Housemistress, and asked if she could show me to her office. “Certainly Sir”, she replied, smiling broadly, “Let me carry your bag!”. If I had any doubts about becoming a Governor, that kind and confident pupil saw them off.
Pupil numbers remained steady in my first few years as a Governor, but the School needed to grow revenues in other ways too, not least to help fund the maintenance and renewal of an aging and historic school estate. With that in mind, in 2015 we began to look at developing Sedbergh Schools internationally, and I took the lead on this on behalf of the Board, working with Peter Marshall, then Chief Operating Officer of the School.
Our first forays in the Middle East were ultimately unsuccessful, but provided important learnings that enabled us to move quickly to sign agreements for our first international school in Fuzhou in south eastern China, with the Djuhar family. The first phase of this wonderful campus opened in September 2018. The Djuhars were determined to build a world class school in their home city, and to embed the values and history of Sedbergh there.
In 2019, Hugh Blair told the Board that he intended to retire the following year, and I was humbled that the Board felt that I was just the man for the job. Hugh Blair was an early victim of COVID-19, caught at a rugby international in Milan, and was off work for some time. So my first task as acting chair was to authorise the closure of the School campuses in March 2020 – not quite the launch pad for my time as Chair that I had hoped for!
We all have very personal memories of COVID-19, and many families lost loved ones. But I am hugely proud of how the School, all our pupils, parents, Governors, staff and alumni rose to the challenge of sustaining a Sedbergh education through such difficult times. Coming out of COVID-19, pupil numbers continued to grow, helped by the very positive parental perceptions of the School’s response to the pandemic. It felt wonderful to get back to business as usual, and to be able to plan for the future.
My first few years as Chair saw continued investment in the estate, including the creation of a new Sixth Form Study Centre in Queen’s Hall, the New Field Hockey Centre next to the Hirst Centre, and the play barn and the refurbished sports hall at Sedbergh Prep; and we also opened a second international school in Vietnam. Exam results have continued to be strong, with a magnificent ‘value added’ score in A levels last year. We also had great inspection reports at both Schools in 2025.
In July 2024 the Labour party won a landslide victory in the General Election and moved quickly to implement a manifesto pledge to levy VAT on independent school fees. The sector had been bracing for this change for some time, but the impact – particularly on boarding schools and on smaller prep schools – has been harder and faster than anyone anticipated. So my final two years as Chair have been preoccupied with making the school VAT-ready: sustaining pupil recruitment through our brilliant marketing and admissions work, working with our feeder schools to help them weather the storm, driving efficiency savings across our organisation – so that we can share the burden of VAT with parents – and supporting those parents who are still struggling to keep their children at Sedbergh.
This last year marked the quincentenary of the founding of the School by Roger Lupton in 1525. Sedbergh School is surely a very different place to that small school he founded 500 years ago. But I hope that he would recognise the ethos of the School today, and celebrate all that Sedbergh, and Sedberghians, have achieved in those 500 years.
My term of office as Chair and as a Governor is now over, with Ian Durrans taking over the role of Chair at Christmas. I have known Ian since the early 1980s, and I have every confidence that I am leaving the School in safe hands. Leaving the Board, that is, but not yet the School. Ian has asked me to continue to support the Foundation and also the international activities of the School. So, as with the regular rhythm of school life at Sedbergh over the centuries, one term ends, and another starts….
The last five years have been some of the most challenging for the independent schools sector, with the COVID-19 pandemic at the start of the decade and, more recently, the imposition of VAT on private schools. Pupil numbers have fallen dramatically across the sector, many schools have closed and even more are in financial difficulty, with many once proud independent prep schools seeking shelter through mergers and acquisitions. Against this backdrop, I am very proud to be leaving Sedbergh and Sedbergh Prep in such fine shape.
Floreat Sedberghia.
Richard Gledhill (W 1967-71)