Sussex


<p><a href="https://sussex.muddystilettos.co.uk/kids/school-reviews/lancing-college/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lancing College</a> welcomed its new Head Teacher, Dr Scott Crawford, at the start of the current academic year. He arrived from Magdalen College School in Oxford, where he’d been Deputy Head since 2018, having previously held roles at London’s Highgate School, including Head of Science. A graduate of St Peter’s College, Oxford, he has a PhD in Biology from the University of York but he’s also a committed bookworm. In fact, he almost swerved towards Eng Lit as a teenager, so he’s especially chuffed to now have Lancing alum Evelyn Waugh’s chair in his study.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Muddy popped in for tea and pulled up a slightly less venerable perch to find out more about the man who’s passionate about keeping private education accessible, belts out Sondheim numbers when everyone’s gone home, and still uses treasury tags.&nbsp;</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="1500" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/sussex/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2026/05/ScottCrawford_Lancing.png" alt="Dr Scott Crawford, Headmaster of Lancing College, Sussex" class="wp-image-84754" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/sussex/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2026/05/ScottCrawford_Lancing.png 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/sussex/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2026/05/ScottCrawford_Lancing-533x800.png 533w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/sussex/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2026/05/ScottCrawford_Lancing-667x1000.png 667w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/sussex/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2026/05/ScottCrawford_Lancing-768x1152.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-give-us-your-elevator-pitch-for-lancing-college">Give us your elevator pitch for Lancing College.</h3>



<p>We’re perhaps most interested in unlocking potential at Lancing and teaching young people to identify who they are. A key mission and something we do really well is helping our children work out what matters most. Lancing’s history also means we’re in a unique position to lean into being a positive voice. Sometimes children get to the end of independent education and they&#8217;re a little bit reticent or embarrassed about it. I want them to go bounding out of here, and to be able to proudly say, actually, my school was a force for good. We had a deep and meaningful bursary programme and we contributed to the local community, and this is what I did to be part of it.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-are-the-top-three-things-to-tackle-in-your-inbox-nbsp">What are the top three things to tackle in your inbox?&nbsp;</h3>



<p>Making sure that the curriculum is responsive and well fitted to pupils is number one. We’re thinking within that about careers education, relationships and sex ed –&nbsp;we want to make sure we’re doing right by our pupils in all those areas.&nbsp;</p>



<p>There’s also our response to AI, which we need to review every 6 months. We’ve been thinking quite hard about what are the enduring values we want to preserve in this brave new world of AI and what are the opportunities – how do we support young people in still persevering with the struggle of thinking hard and not using AI as a shortcut?&nbsp;</p>



<p>The broader strategic challenge is to make sure that we&#8217;re doing as much as we can to keep tabs on fee increases. So what can we do to leverage the estate, to bring in more non-fee derived income to keep the school as accessible as possible? That goes hand-in-hand with our focus on bursaries and raising money to make sure that we&#8217;re still able to offer free places through the Foundationers’ Programme, which is one of the main reasons why I wanted to come to Lancing.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-if-the-school-received-a-million-pound-donation-how-would-you-spend-it-nbsp">If the school received a million-pound donation, how would you spend it?&nbsp;</h3>



<p>The Foundationers’ Programme would certainly get a bit of that but I am keen that the school keeps up with the expectation from parents in terms of what an independent education should be providing. We&#8217;re renovating our swimming pool just now, which is a pretty major project, and there are other bits of the sporting estate that I want to develop.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-describe-your-own-childhood-school-days-nbsp">Describe your own childhood school days.&nbsp;</h3>



<p>I was deliriously happy at school. It was small, rural comprehensive school in Scotland and there was lots of warmth, lots of kindness, and a sense of ‘can do’. I had really supportive teachers and did the classic thing of going to university to study biology because I was in awe of my biology teacher.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-was-his-magic-nbsp">What was his magic?&nbsp;</h3>



<p>He was a very engaging teacher and he thought a lot about the delivery of the subject and how to make it interesting, and that was quite infectious. He also knew when to push – he would say, this is quite an interesting book, I think you should read it. That’s something I’ve taken from him. I&#8217;ve never worried about when books don&#8217;t come back, I take that as a good sign.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-was-there-a-common-theme-to-your-school-report-nbsp">Was there a common theme to your school report?&nbsp;</h3>



<p>Oh gosh! I think I was quite chatty. “Scott’s doing well but could be a bit more focused”, perhaps?&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-were-your-best-and-worst-subjects">What were your best and worst subjects? </h3>



<p>My worst subject was probably history and I’ve been playing catch-up since. My best was physics but I absolutely loved English, and there was a bit of a toss-up about whether I would want to do English at university or science.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-we-tend-to-think-of-that-as-being-unusual-but-we-probably-shouldn-t-right-nbsp">We tend to think of that as being unusual but we probably shouldn’t, right?<strong>&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p>I turned this into an assembly recently because I had Faber’s collected Seamus Heaney’s sitting on my study desk and somebody came in and said, what are you doing with that, I thought you were a scientist?&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-where-did-you-go-to-university-and-what-did-you-study-nbsp">Where did you go to university and what did you study?<strong>&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p>I did biological sciences at St Peter’s, Oxford. At the end of it, I didn&#8217;t know quite what to do but I enjoyed being in the lab and so went to York on a doctoral scholarship. While I was doing my PhD, I realised I was better at teaching than doing experiments but all my chums were off becoming corporate lawyers, so I applied for a training contract as a solicitor as well as a job as a teacher. Both were on the cards but I went with teaching and within a term I absolutely loved it and couldn’t imagine doing anything else.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-describe-what-s-on-your-desk-nbsp">Describe what&#8217;s on your desk.&nbsp;</h3>



<p>I&#8217;ve got my LEGO space shuttle and a range of inks because I’m a fountain pen user. This pelican is a present from a pupil and I use as my treasury tag holder – I like the freedom of a treasury tag over the restriction of a staple. I&#8217;m also a big lamp fan. The first thing I do is put the lamps on in the morning to make it feel a bit more cosy – you want people to feel at ease when they come into the head&#8217;s office. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-if-you-weren-t-a-head-what-would-you-be-nbsp">If you weren&#8217;t a head, what would you be?&nbsp;</h3>



<p>How revealing do I want to be? I think maybe an interior designer. I’ve got really into antiques and furnishing spaces. I’m not sure I’d be very good but I&#8217;d be enthusiastic. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tell-us-about-a-favourite-book-now-at-university-and-in-childhood-nbsp">Tell us about a favourite book now, at university and in childhood.&nbsp;</h3>



<p>In childhood it was Robert Graves&#8217;s&nbsp;<em>Goodbye to All That</em>. It’s the book I’ve probably reread most during my life. At university, I really liked Alan Hollinghurst and was very into Martin Amis but I also read&nbsp;<em>Far from the Madding Crowd</em>, which I absolutely adored, and it wasn&#8217;t a book that I would naturally have read during a biology degree. And most recently?&nbsp;<em>The Goldfinch</em>&nbsp;by Donna Tartt.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-advice-would-you-give-to-your-younger-self-and-your-current-students-nbsp">What advice would you give to your younger self and your current students?&nbsp;</h3>



<p>One of the things I say most often is about reaching out for all the support that&#8217;s available here. I tell the kids there are so many people that really want the best for you, and my golly, it&#8217;s their job – it doesn&#8217;t happen in later life and it only really works if you try and grasp it. I think that&#8217;s something I would say to my younger self as well – there are certainly moments when I think I could have taken better advantage of some of the support that I had access to.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-is-there-a-song-that-you-sing-at-full-volume-when-everyone-else-has-gone-home-nbsp">Is there a song that you sing at full volume when everyone else has gone home?&nbsp;</h3>



<p>Probably something by Sondheim. I was absolutely belting out&nbsp;<em>Not A Day Goes By</em>&nbsp;over the weekend. I’m an enthusiastic singer – not a very talented one – but congregational singing here at Lancing is such a joy.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-is-there-a-play-or-a-film-that-should-be-on-every-child-s-cultural-bucket-list-nbsp">Is there a play or a film that should be on every child&#8217;s cultural bucket list?&nbsp;</h3>



<p>Can I go in a different direction?&nbsp;And this is not to sound pompous, but I came from rural Scotland, where there was very little of an arts scene, and it was only when I lived in London that I discovered opera.&nbsp;It just blew me away that you could spend twenty quid and get to go up in the gods at Covent Garden last-minute and see something just so all-consuming in terms of drama and music and performance. Glyndebourne’s local and there’s lots of really interesting community opera.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Keen to find out more about Lancing College? Book <a href="https://www.lancingcollege.co.uk/lancing-college/admissions/open-events/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a> for the next Open Event for Year 9, 10 and Sixth Form on <strong>6 Jun</strong>. </em></p>



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Head’s Up: Meet Lancing College’s Dr Scott Crawford

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