New Deputy Director, A Wellbeing & Technology Expert

Tom Hadcroft joins the Aiglon College community in April as a new Deputy School Director. Tom will have primary leadership in the areas of wellbeing and safeguarding. He is a tremendously experienced educator with diverse experience in the domains of computing, boarding, wellbeing, safeguarding and school leadership. 

He comes to Aiglon most recently having worked as Headteacher at Berkhamsted Boys School in the UK. However, Tom is no stranger to Villars-sur-Ollon having worked for five years just up the road at Collège Alpin Beau Soleil as School Technology Enhanced Learning Lead and Senior Housemaster. His teaching career started in the world of international education, teaching business English in Frankfurt, Germany. He developed his initial passion for education there, but it was paired with a new discovery – the growing domain of computer science. Tom returned home to the UK to complete a Masters of Science in Computing that opened up opportunities to combine both of these interests, teaching and computing, in a dynamic and varied career.

He worked at St John’s School Leatherhead before taking up his post at Beau Soleil. He then traded the Alps for the heart of London where he worked as Vice Principal and then Senior Vice Principal at DLD College London. It was here a third strand of Tom’s education career, in wellbeing, was firmly established.

Tom was at DLD College when the 2017 London Bridge attacks took place; one of the school’s staff and seven others lost their lives. This impacted not just the DLD community, but Tom personally and the trajectory of his career. “As you can imagine,” he says, “This had a profound impact on the College. We put a lot of things in place, and we spoke to different people about how to best move forward. All of what we worked toward during that time gave the college a cutting-edge element to how it approached wellbeing and boarding.”

For Tom, this also motivated his own further training. He has since qualified in mental health first aid training and has a passion and interest in helping to “train the trainer.” He has trained between three to four hundred different people in mental health aid, including teachers and students. When asked how he hopes to bring his experiences to Aiglon, Tom is clear. “I want every single component of the school in the areas of wellbeing and safeguarding to be as the best it possibly can be. It’s about making sure that wellbeing interconnects with all other parts of the school, and that collectively we have the ambition to do the very best we can do.”

This ambition of course ties back into the world of technology that has shaped his teaching career. “Technology and wellbeing is going to be one of the biggest areas of focus.” But technology for Tom speaks to a more fundamental human reality. “How we interconnect with who we are and our sense of being is really important. I’m mindful of how people have different needs and how we cope differently. One of the core elements for me is destigmatising mental health and allowing people to understand that it’s okay not to be okay. But how do we build people back?”

In recent years Tom has also been an accreditation visitor for the Council of International Schools (CIS), through which Aiglon is also accredited. “Going to visit an international school in Uganda was probably one of the most impactful professional development experiences that I ever had.” Further he also supports the Boarding School Association (BSA) as a trainer for the international boarding course, working to support houseparents across the globe.

Tom is excited to return to the Villars-sur-Ollon area with his wife and two children, an international family in their own right, Tom’s wife comes from France and Spain. “Even back in the UK, my son still felt more Swiss than British!” He recalls, “During our first time here, Villars was such a lovely community. Even as I have been back now, I have seen familiar faces and been greeted with big smiles on the street. When someone recognises you, that does something to you.”

“If the roots stick to the mountain,” he laughs, “you can’t get away.” Aiglon is thrilled to be able to welcome Tom and his family, and we look forward to introducing him to the whole Aiglon community over the months ahead.

AI & Editing Disclosures: AI used for producing interview transcripts. Quotes have been edited by the author for clarity.