Dr Stephen Tommis is the new chief executive of the Montessori St Nicholas charity.
He was the founding executive director of the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education (HKAGE), from 2008 to 2014, but decided to return to the UK to be closer to his three adult children.
“They are at the heart of life. My wife died a number of years ago and we were a single-parent family for a long time. Under those circumstances you either fall apart or come closer together. We did the latter.”
Dr Tommis, who has worked in education for 23 years, was also director of The National Association for Gifted Education (NAGC) in the UK for five years from 2003.
“My background is 98 per cent education so I was looking for a job in that field but to do with a charity, because I like the charity world.
“I’ve believed in the Montessori method for a long time and we need to get a greater public awareness of it. That is my primary goal, to get Montessori education a much higher profile in the UK.”
In Grimsby, Dominique Gobbi is the new executive principal at Havelock Academy in Grimsby. She was previously Associate Headteacher at Blessed Thomas Holford School in Manchester.
Describing her first week in the new post as “frenetic”, Ms Gobbi said she was excited about the new position.
“I got to a stage where I had gone through a lot of roles in a number of schools and I was ready for a new challenge.
“It was the appeal of being able to bring in my expertise from past experiences to a school that maybe needs that different outlook to take it to the next step.”
Qualified as a teacher in 2006, 31-year-old Ms Gobbi studied at the University of York and then did her PGCE at the University of Manchester.
Harry Fletcher-Wood, 30, a former history teacher with responsibility for continuing professional development (CPD) at Greenwich free school will become the associate director of knowledge development for TeachFirst.
His main aim in the role is finding practices that help teachers have more impact in their classroom and finding ways to share that knowledge among trainees. He will be based in the organisation’s research, evaluation and impact team.
A keen cyclist and regular contributor to Schools Week’s Blogs of the Week column, Mr Fletcher-Wood has been a teacher for eight and a half years, including two years in Japan and India.
“I wasn’t really looking for a move but I was really excited about this position.
“The team I have taken over is working on a project videoing TeachFirst teachers in the classroom, making them into case studies for people to use.
“I’m looking to develop that and try different approaches to use as examples for our teachers and the education community.”
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