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Karen Moffat, the axed head of the British School of Bahrain (BSB), set off from the kingdom at the weekend to start a new life in China after being snapped up by one of the world’s leading educational institutions.
Since the shock of losing her post despite an ‘outstanding’ independent assessment of the school last April, Mrs Moffat has been offered several senior positions and was even approached by investors looking to set up new schools on the island.
Ironically, she had also been headhunted just weeks before losing her BSB post to take over a school in Abu Dhabi and turned the position down. When the recruitment company heard she was suddenly available, she was approached to apply for the position of Dulwich College International’s (DCI) deputy director of schools, responsible for strategic projects, based in Shanghai.
After being interviewed with other shortlisted candidates, she was offered the job and accepted the challenge. “I am utterly delighted,” she said over a pot of tea at the Ritz-Carlton Bahrain Hotel & Spa. “I feel very fortunate to have secured this good promotion after what felt like such a huge blow to my professional reputation.
“I have to leave – to put some distance between me and what happened and to get my life and my previously excellent professional standing back on track.
“I have had a traumatising, damaging experience and I just feel that staying here wouldn’t be good for me the way I’m feeling at the moment.
“I’m very grateful for the offers from Bahrain but none of them were right for me.
“Of course, it will be bitter sweet for me to leave and I will miss the kingdom a great deal. It’s personally a huge wrench and a major upheaval in our lives as my husband, Michael, will be staying behind in our home in Hamala. I’ll miss all my books and my 11 cats and, of course, the wonderful friends I’ve made at the school, the members of staff, the parents and, of course, the lovely BSB children.
“But I’m very much looking forward to working for true educational visionaries who have strong and sound financial foundations and the business acumen and expertise to run an expanding group of world class international schools with a forward-looking attitude.”
Under the leadership of Fraser White and Christain Guertler, DCI started operations in China in 2003, with the establishment of Dulwich College in Shanghai, a co-educational, academic institution offering education to the expatriate community, sharing the same educational philosophy as Dulwich College, which is a prestigious independent boys’ school in south east London established in 1619.
DCI, together with Dulwich College in London, is in partnership to expand the Dulwich network around the world, with a specific focus towards the major global financial and cultural capitals.
The motto of DCI is ‘Detur Pons Mundo’ or ‘Building bridges to the world’ and Mrs Moffat is looking forward to carrying on in South East Asia with the work she had been doing with the BSB, she says, to ‘develop true excellence’ in international education.
Following the success of Shanghai, DCI has established Dulwich Colleges in Beijing, Suzhou and Seoul and will be soon opening its fifth school in Singapore, with more new schools planned for the near future.
Mrs Moffat, 56, and Michael, 58, an aircraft engineer, recently celebrated their 36th wedding anniversary. They have two children, Danielle, 31, a solicitor in the UK, and Tristan, 29, who runs a successful Brazilian nightclub and restaurant in London’s trendy Covent Garden.
The couple’s professional careers have on occasions meant they have had to live apart and meet up for holidays so they’ve done it before. Mrs Moffat, a former deputy head of St Christopher’s Senior School, was academic principal at Hong Kong International School before being tempted back to join her former colleague Bill Frost as deputy head of the BSB in 2008.
When Mr Frost returned to the UK she stepped into his shoes as acting principal before being appointed Head of School in 2011.
Her solicitors negotiated a final settlement with BSB this week following her dismissal, which staff and parents were told was due to a ‘difference in strategic vision’ between her and its owner and chairman, Esam Janahi.
BSB has recently been advertising for a replacement in the Times Education Supplement in the UK and interviews for the new Head of School will take place shortly.
As reported in GulfWeekly, Mr Janahi announced that deputy head Dot Loveland had been appointed as its acting head. He also thanked Mrs Moffat for her ‘outstanding contribution’ to the school.
The BSB opened in 1995 in a small campus in Adliya with only 172 pupils.
Mr Janahi, executive chairman of Gulf Finance House, took over its ownership and merged it with Al Ruwad School in 2007.
Its modern campus opened in September 2008 and the school was recently given the green light to go-ahead with a BD4.1 million expansion of its Hamala premises
The project is scheduled to start this month and take 18 months to complete.
The school currently has 1,585 students, aged from three to 18, and the development was part of a four-year plan to increase the number of places to 2,300, making it the largest English-curriculum international school on the island.
BSB recently received a glowing report by The Schools Review Unit. It was labelled ‘outstanding’ in every category monitored including the effectiveness of teaching and learning, how well the students were guided and supported, as well as its leadership, management and governance.
