The new Headmaster of Saint Felix School in Southwold took up his post at the end of the Easter holidays. Dr Simon Letman, who has lived in Suffolk for nearly twenty years, has spent twenty five years working in independent education before accepting the Headship of what is one of the Eastern Region’s leading co-educational independent day and boarding schools.
Before arriving at Saint Felix, Dr Letman worked as Director of Professional Development for HMC (The Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference), the leading independent sector Heads’ Association. Prior to that, he spent twelve years working at the Royal Hospital School in Holbrook as Head of History and later Director of Studies. He began his teaching career at Warwick School, where he was a Housemaster.
Nigel Johnson, Chairman of Governors at Saint Felix commented:
“We are delighted to welcome Dr Letman to Saint Felix School and excited about the challenge that it provides for us all. He has proven leadership experience both in the HMC and the wider educational world and this makes me confident that he can take the school forward not only in the areas of teaching and learning but all aspects of the establishment.”
Simon Letman said that he was hugely excited to be leading the school through the next phase of its impressive development over recent years. The new Headmaster went on to say “Saint Felix offers a really distinctive and exciting educational experience where all boys and girls are taken on a journey of self-discovery and challenged to find that there is more in them than they could ever have imagined”. He believes that one of the School’s great qualities, and one which attracted him to the post, is its “focus on equipping pupils with flexible skills and attitudes they will need to cope with the challenges of our fast-changing modern world”. One of the problems educators face, he believes, is that most of the challenges young people will have to confront in the future are actually unknown and probably unpredictable at the moment. The new Headmaster went on to say that, in addition to focusing on achieving the best possible academic results, “schools like Saint Felix concentrate on developing qualities like resourcefulness, resilience, flexibility and persistence, and this is what makes what we do here so distinctive and relevant to both the present and the future”.