Headmaster’s Welcome

An old story has a princess setting her princely suitors a challenge to determine whom she will marry. The princes are blindfolded and asked to identify an object in front of them. They all reach out and hastily announce their answers, which range from spear to snake, with curtain, wall, column and rope all in between. The seventh prince does not reach out at all, but listens to the blundering of his rivals. He works out how their reasoning could possibly fit together and solves the conundrum: “It’s an elephant.”

Whilst this fable offers sage advice about listening, not simply trusting what is before you, it also serves to illustrate the pitfalls of describing a school. Chafyn Grove is made up of many parts, but is not wholly represented by any of them. The enjoyment of challenge, the exercise of compassion, results, facilities and food are each characterful aspects of our identity, but none of them are the entire story. I hope our website gives you as many pieces of our narrative as possible, which can combine to give you the clues you seek as to what distinguishes us as a school from others. To remove the blindfold altogether, I look forward to meeting in person.

Simon Head spent his Prep School education at Cranmore, in Surrey. Thereafter he went to Stonyhurst then Cambridge, where he read Classics. University was prefaced by a gap year as a platoon commander in the Royal Green Jackets and succeeded by a teaching post at Dulwich College Preparatory School. An ensuing year teaching in up-country Kenya at Pembroke House led to the role of Housemaster, then Deputy Headmaster, at St. John’s Beaumont in Windsor. In 2010 he took over the headship of Moreton Hall in Suffolk, before moving to Chafyn Grove for the September of 2016.

Simon is married to Sarah, who is also a teacher. Their son Toby is currently in Year 6. Alongside work Simon enjoys reading novels, walking the dog, football in the garden and fly-fishing.