Ralph Tabberer

Ralph Tabberer is an expert educator with more than 40 years’ experience in the school sector, in higher education and in government. He was Director-General of Schools in England between 2006 and 2009, responsible for the development and performance of 23,000 schools in the UK. Between 2009 and 2012, Ralph was Chief Operating Officer and Chief Education Officer at GEMS Education where he steered the company through the recession and prepared it for faster growth.

In 2012, Ralph established the first of his own businesses, supporting investors, operators, governments and schools in the region. He now owns and chairs four educational businesses providing consultancy, solutions, management and HR support for regional and international clients.

He has worked with government reform programmes in the UAE, Libya, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia; he has held contracts with leading technology players including Pearson, SEGA and the BBC. He is particularly proud of the work his teams do with individual schools on school start-ups, school improvement, professional development, financial benchmarking, executive search and teacher recruitment, procurement and digital marketing. He was recently engaged to help open more affordable international schools in Singapore and Japan.

Ralph is a graduate of Cambridge University and a qualified teacher. In the New Year’s Honours list of 2009, Her Majesty The Queen invested Ralph as a Companion of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath (CB) in recognition of his services to teacher training and to schools. He is a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education, University College of London and an Honorary Professor at Warwick University. He has an Honorary Doctorate from the University of East London. In the last year, he co-authored reports on low-cost schools in Africa and Asia, and on the expansion of international school chains, globally.