In 2023 Concord College celebrates 40 years as a charitable trust. For 34 of those years Dr Iain Bride has been a trustee, including 22 years as Chairman, a role from which he has just retired.

Neil Hawkins, Principal of Concord College International and former Principal of Concord College told us;

“Iain is a complete visionary. He is the person who has been ultimately responsible for ensuring Concord’s high standards are maintained while keeping an eye to the future. He has shown his trust in us as a college and has been both liberating and challenging at the same time. A truly exceptional person, he has been really inspirational, a problem solver and prepared to take a risk when needed. Iain embodies Concord’s values of rigour, kindness and creativity.”

We met up with Dr Bride to find out more about the work trustees do and take a look back over the last four decades, including his 34 years as a trustee.

Q) Please tell us more about how Concord College became a charitable trust.

“As a charitable trust, Concord has no owners and no shareholders. Any surplus revenue is ploughed back into the College. However, Concord hasn’t always been a trust, in fact the College was established in 1949 after World War II as a privately-owned language school wit only 12 students by Mr Paul Oertel and Miss Monica Carr-Taylor. When they retired in 1969 Concord was bought by Mr Frank Bell, owner of the Bell School of Languages. 

Frank Bell was a real visionary, whilst a prisoner of war in Borneo Frank had risked punishment by setting up a secret ‘university’ to provide opportunities for fellow prisoners and this was a strong influence on his life when he returned home."

"Frank moved Concord from its home in Tunbridge Wells to Acton Burnell Hall in 1973, the former home of Our Lady of Sion Convent School. I think the Bruce Smythe estate, which owned the Hall at the time and were devout Catholics, may not have been too happy about us moving in!

In 1983 Frank Bell decided to retire. Concord College had achieved a lot of success and growth under Tony Morris’s leadership as Principal. Frank particularly valued Tony’s skills as a great marketer and as a leader with a fantastic vision for the College. In order to ensure the College was not sold off, and to keep Tony at the helm, he set up the Bell Concord Educational Trust.”

Q) What do you think Frank Bell would have made of Concord today?

“When the Trust was set up there was very little money to spend. Tony Morris, Tony Foster, John Leighton, Bob Marston and Jack Phillips were running it and everyone had to get stuck in.

"Forty year later Concord is a very different place with an enviable reputation for its academic results, around 600 students and well over 100 teachers. It employs many more staff who keep the College running and sticking to all the statutory requirements that didn’t exist in 1983. Until 1997 we didn’t even have pastoral staff, now we have 35. Concord International is also well established with two schools in China and a new one soon to open in Malaysia.

The fact that so much has changed would not surprise Frank Bell. It still feels like a family-run school even though it is a charity. Frank trusted Tony Morris’s vision to expand the school and raise academic expectations and would have been 100% behind growing outside the UK. Perhaps the only surprise is that we didn’t do that sooner.”

Q) What is the role of Concord’s trustees?

“In short, trustees have legal responsibility for the College and to ensure it is well run. It’s our statutory duty to make sure Concord adheres to UK corporate and charity legislation, but we are not responsible for running it on a day-to-day basis. We have regular meetings with the Senior Leadership Team to make sure the College is financially stable, that child protection policies are in place and, if any parents or staff make a complaint which the Principal can not deal with, it is our role to resolve grievances.

Concord’s trustees must also find and appoint new trustees. In our Memorandum or Articles of Association (the legal statement signed by our first trustees which contains all the rules about how it should be run) it states that there must be between 4 and 12 people. We need a wide spread of professional experience, not just former teachers, and every trustee must be willing to give up 6 days a year, unpaid, to meet. This is a lot to ask when trustees have other jobs!”

Q) How did you become a Trustee?

“I was a maths lecturer at UMIST (the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and now part of University of Manchester) and then became Director of International Relations.  In 1984 I was on a UMIST trip to Singapore when I first met Frank Bell by chance, staying at the same hotel. I was invited to give occasional maths lectures at Concord in the 1980s and then, in 1989, Concord trustee, John Parker, recommended me to the Board. In September 2001 I was appointed as Chairman of the Board.”

Q) You have just retired as Board Chairman, what is the Chairman’s role?

“The primary role, as described by the Association of Governing Bodies of Independent Schools, and as I have found from experience, is to be the “Critical Friend" to the Principal and, to a lesser extent, to the Bursar.  Until I became Chair, I did not fully realise just how difficult and demanding the role of Principal is and how much support they can require or, at times, need to be challenged as to their actions.  

The Principal is unable to have close confidants among the Senion Leadership Team or staff and so must turn to the Chair whenever he or she needs to discuss a serious problem.   This means that the Chair must be prepared to be at the end of a phone at all times and, if necessary, be in the College to give support to the Principal.  I used to say that if the Principal 'phones there is a problem!”

Q) Please introduce us to the new Chair and the other Board members.

“We have a great mix of experience in our trustees. In September 2023 Dr Colin Stanford stepped into the role of Chairman following the approval of the Department of Education. Many alumni will remember him as the College GP in Cressage.

We are delighted to have three Concord alumni as trustees. Venture Capitalist, Peter Yong (1984) has recently been joined by new trustees; Strategic Advisor, Christos Gosdis (1998) a former Concord Head Prefect, and Fehintola Akinlose (1992) who is Finance Director at the UK House of Lords.

Although no longer Chairman, I am staying on as a trustee until the AGM in April and we also have Richard Dyson, a former president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales and Brian Yates who is our longest serving board member after myself. One of Brian’s close relatives was our first bursar and was a prisoner of war with Frank Bell. Jean Krasocki worked in international education and Peter Ruben is Director of Studies at Bromsgrove School, and they are joined by Ruth Mannell, a former school Deputy Head, Scott Donovan, a former KC and Fiona Brown, Director of the University of Manchester’s International Office.

We were saddened in October to learn of the death of retired trustee, Tim Hughes, who was the architect of Concord’s impressive science building as well as many other building improvements and extensions.”

Q) What have been the biggest changes at Concord in the last 34 years?

“As we said earlier, Concord grew a lot in student numbers and academic standing under Tony Morris’s leadership. When Tony announced his intention to retire many people were up in arms worrying about Concord’s future without him at the helm, and it became a serious challenge to find a new Head. It was important we found someone parents would trust and with the charisma to build strong relationships.

When we employed Neil Hawkins, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Under his leadership we continued to improve Concord’s position in the league tables and soon found ourselves in a position where academic standards were so high we had to turn down applications from excellent candidates.

It was also under Neil’s leadership that we developed the pastoral side of our offering which was important but costly but, as we’ve managed our finances carefully, we’ve not had to borrow money when we’ve expanded.

Now Neil has moved on to be head of Concord College International, I am sure Dr Truss will do a great job leading Concord into the future.”

Q) When we chat to Concord alumni we often ask them what they were like as students, and what they might have said to their younger selves if they had the chance. Please share your memories.

“I was an academic student so would probably have fitted in well at Concord. I went to George Watson’s College then on to university in Edinburgh, having won the John Welsh Mathematics Scholarship, and then went on to study Part III of the Mathematics Tripos at Cambridge University.

There are some fantastic universities so it’s hard to choose one that I would like to go to now. I think I would prefer a university that does lots of research, since I believe it’s more important to check a university’s academic credentials than its surroundings, but I am sure I would still choose to go to Edinburgh or Cambridge.”

Q) Our alumni are wonderful at offering their help and advice to each other younger Concordians. If you could ask our alumni to help the College in any way, what would it be?

"The most wonderful gift a Concordian could give back to the College is to recommend our College to friends, families and associates to spread the word about what a unique and special place it is for bright young people looking for a bright future."

Q) How do you like to spend your time now you have retired as a lecturer?

“I enjoy teaching and playing bridge, gardening and cooking. If I had the opportunity to give a maths talk at Concord I would jump at the chance!”