Jesse Elzinga, Head of Sevenoaks, on building an American-style endowment in the UK
“A well-educated person knows a little bit of everything, but some things very well. It’s just not okay, even as a young head of department, to say ‘I’m no good at maths.’ Whatever profession you go into, you need different skills.”
Jesse Elzinga has been at the helm of Sevenoaks School since 2020, leading one of the UK's flagship IB schools through the pandemic and beyond. A dual US-UK citizen raised on a small farm outside Detroit, Jesse sold apples at farmers markets as a child before winning a place at Harvard with a big bursary, then going onto a scholarship at Oxford University. That experience of genuinely transformative education drives his ambition to have one in three Sevenoaks students on a free or assisted place by the school's 600th anniversary in 2032. In this conversation with Henry Faber, Jesse makes a passionate case for the IB diploma as the best education available for 16 to 18 year olds anywhere in the world, explains why he's building an American-style endowment and delivers a controversial opinion that bucks the trend of most H&T guests: GCSEs are actually great.
🎙️ Episode highlights
Why Jesse believes the IB diploma is the best education for 16 to 18 year olds he's seen anywhere in the world
The problem with dropping subjects at 16: "It's literally 10%. You can't do 10%? It's a mind block that shuts off whole areas of learning."
His journey from selling apples for a $1/bag in Detroit to headship at Sevenoaks, and why that drives his passion for bursaries
The ambitious goal: one in three students on a free or assisted place by 2032, funded by an American-style endowment
His controversial opinion: GCSEs are great. "If I were to open a school in a US city, I would do GCSEs. It's a global qualification with an international benchmark."
Every school should ban mobile phones tomorrow. "If you come to Sevenoaks in Year 7, you must not give your kid a smartphone."