Mr Geoffrey A Thompson DL
Educated at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, where he read music, and the Southbank University, where he did an MBA, Geoffrey retired after 45 years as a secondary school teacher, 22 as Head of two comprehensive schools: the Duchess’s School, Alnwick; and Mill Hill County High School.
His emphases throughout his career were the importance of excellent student behaviour and high quality, mass participation extra-curricular activities and trips.
Under Geoffrey’s headship, Mill Hill County High School’s music became acknowledged to be quite exceptional: he established a unique ten-year tradition of joint concerts at school with the full Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (30 students played the solo part in concerto movements with the RPO, the School Choir performed a major choral work every year, accompanied by the RPO and the RPO strings performed with the School String Chamber Orchestra, before the RPO performed a great symphony to the 100+ student performers and the audience).
Having benefited from membership of the Cambridge University Officer Training Corps, Geoffrey established a Mill Hill County High School CCF contingent, in partnership with Mill Hill School.
Bringing his personal mountain sport enthusiasms to the benefit of his students, Geoffrey also made a major contribution to outdoor education, founding a week’s residential outdoor activity for every child at the school where he worked in 1985 (still running), founding and running, for over a decade, a professionally-guided school Alpine mountaineering course in Chamonix and leading a school first ascent Himalayan expedition.
Geoffrey is a Deputy Lieutenant in the Greater London Lieutenancy. He is Chairman of the St Catharine’s College Cambridge Alumni Society and of the Kensington Olympia Festival of Music and the Arts. He is a member of the Oxford and Cambridge Club General Committee and is Chairman of its Events Committee. A family man, Geoffrey has been a governor of both state and independent schools.
His emphases throughout his career were the importance of excellent student behaviour and high quality, mass participation extra-curricular activities and trips.
Under Geoffrey’s headship, Mill Hill County High School’s music became acknowledged to be quite exceptional: he established a unique ten-year tradition of joint concerts at school with the full Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (30 students played the solo part in concerto movements with the RPO, the School Choir performed a major choral work every year, accompanied by the RPO and the RPO strings performed with the School String Chamber Orchestra, before the RPO performed a great symphony to the 100+ student performers and the audience).
Having benefited from membership of the Cambridge University Officer Training Corps, Geoffrey established a Mill Hill County High School CCF contingent, in partnership with Mill Hill School.
Bringing his personal mountain sport enthusiasms to the benefit of his students, Geoffrey also made a major contribution to outdoor education, founding a week’s residential outdoor activity for every child at the school where he worked in 1985 (still running), founding and running, for over a decade, a professionally-guided school Alpine mountaineering course in Chamonix and leading a school first ascent Himalayan expedition.
Geoffrey is a Deputy Lieutenant in the Greater London Lieutenancy. He is Chairman of the St Catharine’s College Cambridge Alumni Society and of the Kensington Olympia Festival of Music and the Arts. He is a member of the Oxford and Cambridge Club General Committee and is Chairman of its Events Committee. A family man, Geoffrey has been a governor of both state and independent schools.