Richard Backhouse

Richard Backhouse has been Principal of Berkhamsted Schools Group since January 2016. He was a boarder both at Cheam School, and Marlborough College, where he won an Exhibition. After a year working on a kibbutz in Israel, in a hotel in the French Alps, and running a bar in his home town, he read Economics at Cambridge, expecting to go on to be a journalist. Experience acting as a ski guide for school children and teaching sailing in the summers for a charity gave him a sense of the value of teaching, and so he went to Oundle School in 1990, expecting to teach only briefly before returning to university to do a PhD, but stayed for six years before moving to Bradfield College. At these schools he variously taught Economics, coached rowing and football, ran a Christian Union, and acquired managerial and leadership experience both running a boarding house and as Director of Pastoral and Extra-curricular activities. In 2005, he was appointed Principal at Monkton Combe School - an all through group of Pre-prep, Prep and Senior Schools - where he developed the scope and depth of the pupils’ opportunities and achievements. Richard and his wife Debbie have two children and he retains interests in skiing, plays golf badly, reads, and enjoys gadgets.