Tom Wheare was born in Oxford in 1944 and one of his godmothers was Betty Johnston, later a formidable and long-serving Chairman of GDST. His sisters were both educated at the Trust’s Oxford High School for Girls. This early promise was not entirely cancelled out by a career spent teaching in Independent boys’ and coeducational schools, since he was elected to GDST Council in 2006 and retained on the new, smaller Council in 2008.
Tom was educated at the Dragon School and Magdalen College School, Oxford and then won a History Exhibition to King’s College, Cambridge.
Soon after arriving at King’s, he gained a place in the College Choir and is still an enthusiastic singer and erratic historian. After a Dip. Ed. at Christ Church, Oxford where he was a lay clerk in the Cathedral Choir, Tom taught at Eton from 1967 to 1976, before becoming Housemaster of the School House at Shrewsbury. In 1982 he was appointed Headmaster of Bryanston, a post he held from 1983 to 2005.
Tom Wheare was an engaged member of HMC (the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference), serving as Treasurer from 1993 to 1999 and Chairman in 2000. He has been a governor of eight Prep Schools at various times and is presently a Governor of Exeter School, The Dragon School and Port Regis School and, until recent reorganisation, of Blackheath High School within the Trust. He is a member of the Executive Committee of AGBIS (the Association of Governing Bodies of Independent Schools), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and he edits the HMC house magazine Conference & Common Room. He is married, with two daughters, and lives in Wiltshire.