Loretto Appoints New Headmaster
25 June 2008
The Governors are delighted to announce that Peter Hogan, B Com PGCE MA FRSA, will be the next Headmaster of Loretto School near Edinburgh from September 2008. This will follow the retirement of the current Head, Michael Mavor CVO, formerly Headmaster of Rugby and Gordonstoun, who will end his distinguished career at Loretto where he began his education as a boy.
Michael Mavor's time as Headmaster at Loretto will best be remembered for a return to the basic but essential details of boarding school education and significant investments in the campus and facilities. The boarding houses have been re-structured to facilitate the inclusion of more day pupils and flexi-boarders into School, given the demand for "a boarding ethos" and "a full day". Under his leadership academic results have improved enormously, there have been major changes in the pastoral structure of the School, big improvements in the extra-curricular activities programme, and a very successful refurbishment of the School's dining facilities. As a result, Loretto now has the highest School roll in its long history. Peter Hogan is currently Warden (Headmaster) of Llandovery College, a highly successful, co-educational boarding and day school for pupils aged 4-18 in Wales, and has been so for seven years. He has previously been a Deputy Head, Head of Business Education and Marketing, Head of Economics and a teacher of Economics and History.
Ronald Graham CBE, Chairman of the Board of Governors at Loretto, says:
"Peter Hogan's record on the teaching, pastoral care and extra curricular fronts is exemplary. But Peter is more than a very fine educationalist, he has a record at Llandovery of excellent management and leadership; echoing a theme from W B Yeats, he believes that Education is not about filling a pail with water but lighting a fire."
At Llandovery Peter Hogan, aged 46, has successfully opened a new prep school, developed a series of new buildings including £1.5 million high-technology Teaching Centre and doubled the overall size of the school. He has organised school trips to diverse destinations including Siberia, Madagascar and Moscow, coached various different sports and directed a number of school plays. Boys and girls at Llandovery College have recently had national and international successes in rugby, show jumping, fencing, hockey, athletics, cross-country running and shooting, and seventeen earned international honours in 2006.
In addition, Peter is a writer and broadcaster being a regular reviewer on Good Morning Wales and contributor to The Western Mail, a guest on Radio 4's "Money Box" and "In Business". He is an author of two musicals and two radio plays which were broadcast on BBC for younger children as well as numerous business studies texts. He is a Governor of the University of Wales. He has been commissioned by the Confederation of British Industry on the use of teaching resources and by the Royal Bank of Scotland to devise and create a fully computerised school banking system.
Ronald Graham concludes:
"Clearly we have a man of many and considerable talents but equally importantly we have a man of great humanity - a family man. He is married to Alison, an impressive person in her own right, and they have two children, Alex (15) and Emma (12).
"Peter's family is from Ireland. He was brought up in the English Midlands and is currently a Headmaster in Wales so, with his coming to Scotland, we are in a sense completing his and his own family's education. Reciprocally, and far more importantly, Loretto will learn and benefit hugely from Peter's great experience, talents and humanity."