"I arrive at Kamuzu Academy after extensive experience of teaching and management in both U.K. and international secondary schools. My focus is delivering high quality provision that enriches the students’ learning experiences, encouraging them to be confident, inquisitive, and socially aware."

Education in a world that is subject to continual change cannot be limited to rote learning, but demands teaching to be more expansive, dynamic and holistic. Collaboration, the ability to work in a team and be self-motivated, are the skills that provide students the strong foundations on which their careers can build. It is my job to see that the students’ individual talents are developed and staff are supported in delivering the best education possible.

My approach has been shaped by the different cultures that I have encountered. From being a teacher of Mathematics in schools in and around London, including Eton, to more recent managerial, pastoral and leadership roles in internationals schools of the Indian subcontinent.

This experience of teaching and supporting students from different backgrounds, as well as engaging with wider communities in the schools where I have been employed, has alerted me to the unique concerns of each student and the value of independent learning.

I bring this student-focused ethos into my role as Headmaster where I intend to build on the prestigious history of Kamuzu Academy, its reputation for excellence, and ensure those students who pass through the school’s gates are equipped to be future leaders in a challenging world.

"Of this the Founder was well aware, not least through his medical studies. Any student, faced with the task of mastering the huge vocabulary of modern medicine, must very quickly realise the extent to which Latin and classical Greek pervade it. ‘Abdomen’ (Latin for ‘belly’) is the first word in my (1990) edition of Black’s ‘Medical Dictionary’; ‘zygoma’ (a bone in the face, from the Greek for ‘yoke’) is the last."

In the entrance to the Administration building at the Academy there are two commemorative plaques. On the right as you enter there is a plaque commemorating the opening of the Academy in 1981. On the left is one commemorating the laying of the foundation stone by the late President Banda on 4th September 1978 – forty years ago this September.

The Academy was built to serve for generations. The quality of its materials and workmanship leaves no room for doubt about that. This, it shares with its English models. Harrow was founded in 1572, Eton in 1440 and Winchester in 1382. At all of them, original buildings survive. The Academy also, if properly maintained, will still be with us in five hundred years time. But these verses have a metaphorical application as well as a literal one. It is what is taught at the Academy,not its physical structures, that must be responsible for “building strong Malawi’s nation”. Here longevity of a different kind characterises the Founder’s vision. Four and a half thousand miles north-west of the Academy lies a great inland sea. Almost landlocked (the Strait of Gibraltar at its western end is only nine miles wide) it was known by those who lived along its shores as ‘Mare Nostrum’ (‘Our Sea’). Today it is the Mediterranean Sea – the sea in the middle (medius) of the earth (terra). About halfway along its northern shore, two peninsulas stretch out towards Africa – Italy and Greece.