I am delighted to announce that we have appointed Ms Louise Higson as our new Head from September, succeeding Mark Turner who is stepping down from the Headship at the end of this academic year.

For the last nine years, Ms Higson has been Head of Farlington School in West Sussex, a well-respected junior and senior school with excellent academic standards and a first-class reputation for pastoral care and supporting pupils’ personal development.

Farlington has its own prep school and Ms Higson has a thorough knowledge of the needs of younger children. In addition, her considerable experience of senior school life will be very helpful because a key part of her role here is to prepare our pupils, not just for senior school entry, but also to enjoy life and to be successful.

Ms Higson was brought up in Cheshire and has a degree in Mathematics from Manchester University. She has taught in schools in the Wirral, London and Milan, then moving to Farlington School in 2005 where she took up the Deputy Headship in 2009 and was promoted to Head three years later. Outside school life, her hobbies include travelling (when allowed), walking and running, and voluntary work within the community. Darwin, her black Labrador, also takes up a lot of her spare time!

We had a large number of applications for the headship and our recruitment adviser Simon Shneerson procured a wonderful choice of excellent candidates. The Governors were hugely impressed by Louise Higson, her passion for education and the strength of her commitment to the welfare, happiness and success of her pupils. She summed up her educational philosophy with the words “Happy children thrive”, which exactly mirrors our own approach.

Louise excelled at every stage in an extremely rigorous assessment process which even included running a Zoom assembly and being interviewed by some of our Year 6 children.

I know you will join me in welcoming Louise Higson to Lady Barn and we will arrange opportunities for you to meet her in person as soon as we can.

Mrs J Berry

Chair of Governors