Meet Our Education Team

Did you know that Nord Anglia Education has a dedicated Education Team? This team of experts helps create new learning opportunities for students, teachers and colleagues across Nord Anglia, enhancing every one of our schools by ensuring we’re always providing a world-class education.

Why an Education Team? And what’s its mission?

Led by our Chief Education Officer Dr Elise Ecoff, our Education Team is made up of experts and lifelong educators — including experienced former teachers and education leaders — who support the organisation’s curricular approach, conduct cutting-edge education research, and lead our efforts when it comes to social impact, equality and diversity, expeditions, Global Campus, education technology (aka edtech), STEAM learning, and much more.

This team of experts is passionate about making learning engaging and meaningful for everyone, whether that’s organising global events, or diving into innovative research around cutting-edge education topics like metacognition, and beyond. 

What is their guiding strategy?

To guide the team’s efforts, they have a strategy for providing a world-class education across all our schools. It’s built on four key pillars:

And how does the team actually work?

Our Education Team plays a pivotal role in shaping and implementing global initiatives that individual schools might not be able to offer on their own. This includes opportunities for both students and teachers created through our partnerships with renowned organisations like UNICEF, MIT, Juilliard, UCL, Boston College and IMG Academy.

Beyond these collaborations, the team organises fantastic regional events — like the annual UNICEF Student Summit — and outdoor learning experiences to Tanzania and Switzerland led by David Wall, our Head of Expeditions. And with a focus on encouraging social impact and charitable giving led by Dr Leslie Williams, Nord Anglia students are motivated to actively contribute to their communities and make the world a better place.

How does the team ensure a high quality education?

Our team makes sure every one of our schools upholds the highest standards of educational quality: this includes closely reviewing our academic performance and encouraging our teaching to be forward-thinking and at the top of their game.

Safety, of course, is our number one priority, and our work around safeguarding and child protection is fundamental to all our schools. All educators in the NAE family are trained in safeguarding and our education team implements this for our schools around the globe.

Led by Inderjit Dehal, Director of Quality and Professional Development, the team also makes sure every school programme meets international quality standards. Research shows accurate self-evaluation is what drives continuous improvement and is what leads to excellent schools. This is why our approach is based on supporting schools to accurately self-evaluate and continually take action to innovate and improve — no matter how good they are already. The accuracy of our self-evaluations are reflected in the external assessments and the accreditations undertaken by our schools.

The education team also works to help children better understand their own thinking and learning processes. Developing ‘metacognitive skills’ is a key focus for our schools and a major research area for Nord Anglia.

How does the Education Team help teachers stay at the top of their game?

We’ve got some of the brightest minds in education working with our community of over 12,000 teachers because we know that outstanding teachers leads to outstanding schools. 

Nord Anglia teachers are passionate and driven with growth mindsets, and professional learning is so important to help them learn how to become even better teachers. 

Led by Simon Kear and Jenny McWalter, each year, the Education Team creates new learning courses for our all our colleagues around the world, including through the award-winning Nord Anglia University (NAU) platform.

Built for Nord Anglia teaching and support colleagues, NAU is home to our bespoke leadership programmes, teaching resources, short-form courses, and more — all designed to support the professional development of our teaching and non-teaching colleagues. NAU encourages collaboration and the sharing of best practice in teaching, wellbeing and career management.

There’s also the fully funded Executive Master’s in International Education with King's College London, only available to Nord Anglia colleagues.

Anything else unique about Nord Anglia’s team?

Last but not least, Nord Anglia has an Education Advisory Board (EAB) -- chaired by Lord David Puttnam -- that provides valuable external perspectives to support the continuous development of our schools’ programmes, curricula, and teaching and learning. The EAB is made up of lifelong educators who have dedicated their lives to improving education standards across the globe.

So, here’s to Nord Anglia’s dedicated Education Team. Hats off to how they work with our schools to bring to life our vision of shaping a generation of creative and resilient global citizens who’ll change our world for the better.

For more information about Nord Anglia’s unique approach to education, click here.