Gus Lock

Haberdashers’ Elstree Schools (Habs) in Hertfordshire has appointed Gus Lock as executive principal across both Habs Boys and Habs Girls schools.

Having been headmaster at Habs Boys since 2018, Lock has led the school for the past five years.

While there are no plans to merge the schools, nor move to full co-education, the 2020 to 2030 strategy has been clear in its intention to develop a closer collaboration between the two schools.

Lock said: “I’m delighted to be leading both of our schools as we head into this next stage of our development strategy. We are dedicated to the benefits of single-sex education and to empowering our students to make a profound impact on the world. Our philanthropic founding principles still remain, as does our core sense of purpose in our community.”

The school stated that its 10-year strategy is focused on the benefits to be gained from the co-location of both campuses and the opportunity it offers for collaboration and shared academic and co-curricular programmes. The school added that there are economies and advantages of scale that the strategy implementation is striving to deliver, whether that be breadth of opportunity, economic, educational or pedagogical.

The schools have already completed the first phase of their longer-term strategy including the launch of co-education taking place in the sixth forms, which was the result of a year-long restructuring of the school day at both schools and involved multiple system and process changes. There are now also collaborative personal social health and economic education sessions and co-curricular activities across all year groups from age four through to 18 and the on-campus.

Lock said: “It really has been a year of significant achievement and is testament to the hard work and dedication of our staff. As we move forward, our sense of community and spirit will lie at the heart of everything we do to enable our future generations to thrive.”

Both schools will continue to be led by the current heads for the remainder of this school year.

The current headmistress at Habs Girls, Rose Hardy, is moving to the John Lyon School in Harrow as head in the next academic year, and the Haberdashers’ Elstree Schools has initiated a recruitment process to replace Hardy as well as to appoint a new headmaster for Habs Boys commencing in September. Both new heads will report to Lock.