Advertise on podcast: The Surbiton High School Podcast

In this episode, we visit the school on its Multicultural Day - a day where students share food, dances and clothes that reflect their cultural heritage.

In this episode, we sit down with Stuart Bird, Rachel Lawson (Outreach and Partnerships Team) and a selection of student volunteers to tell us about the Surbiton High School Community Bank in Kingston. We learn about how donations are collected sorted and given to people in society who need them most.

In this episode, we sit down with Principal Matthew Shoults and talk about how and why Surbiton High School became involved in the UAUK scheme, and how we feel our community benefits by being host to a dozen Ukrainian students.

In this episode, we sit down with a dozen students from Ukraine who visited us in November 2025 as part of the UAUK student visitor scheme. This saw students live with host families in our communities and attend lessons and activities at Surbiton High School for a fortnight. We hear about their experiences on this trip, including: eating British and international food, sight-seeing around London, visiting the Houses of Parliament and meeting Sir Keir Starmer PM.

In this episode, we sit down with Dionne King the Head of Learning Support (SENCO). We learn about how our specialist team works with SEN and EAL students to support their learning from Year 7 all the way through to Year 13.

In this episode, we sit down with Jonny Gall, Head of Hockey at Surbiton High School and talk about what makes our hockey offering particularly special: what is special about our staff, how do we schedule training for our students, and how have our hockey teams been performing this last season?

In this episode, we sit down with author and alumnus, Jacob North. While at Surbiton high school, Jacob was mentored by Stuart Bird our Writer in Residence and Deputy Head of English. A decade later, Jacob has his first book out, ‘Ice Apprentices’ and is working on his follow-up in the series as well as other projects. Reunited after a decade, Stuart and Jacob talk about the writing process and the journey of publishing a novel.

In this episode, we sit down with Polly Rumbold, Head of Development, Alumni Relations and Whole School Events, and talk about celebrating our 141st Founders’ Day. We talk about our church service at St Mark’s Church, our hymns, the traditional iced buns and the importance of marking Founders’ Day each year.

In this episode of the podcast, we sit down with Surbiton High School’s new Principal, Matthew Shoults. We get to know a bit about his background, what brought him into teaching, his first impressions of Surbiton High School and his thoughts on what makes a worthwhile 21st century education.

In this episode, we sit down with the senior school librarian, Joe Humphreys, and we talk about one of our new charity focuses for the next few years: The Cold Feet Foundation, Nepal. The goal of this charitable endeavour is to support a school that has very little to its name. In the episode, Joe describes the lack of funding, lack of resources, and lack of suitable space for teaching & learning, including classrooms with mould growing up the walls and holes in the floor, a library with no books and a budget of 15p a day per person to feed hundreds of students. Joe has travelled to over 40 countries in his lifetime and often spends time volunteering when he travels. His connection to Nepal is a personal one and he speaks very movingly about why this is a worthwhile charity to support.

In this episode, we sit down with Jon White, Academic Mentor, and talk about degree apprenticeship schemes – an alternate route in higher education. Jon’s career prior to coming to work for us included 25 years at a major IT company, where one of his roles was overseeing young trainees and degree apprenticeships. In this episode we talk about why some students might be more suited to this style of learning, which is more hands-on and practical and away from traditional classroom methods, and also about how many of these opportunities are popping up across a wide range of professional careers today.

Fun fact: learning French, Spanish or German is a 100% applicable life skill if you go on a trip to Europe. So why don't we take our language skills in the classroom and put them to use on the continent! In this episode, we hear from Mme Paul and Señora Reyner about the importance of trips in the MFL department: what we offer at Surbiton, how these trips dovetail with other subjects, and we also share our blue-sky ideas for our perfect MFL trip.

In this third and final episode in our AI series, I sit down with Byron King (former VP from the Boy’s Prep, now working at Study Hall, an EdTech AI company), and we discuss our predictions for the future of education with AI. Some of these ideas are within grasp and others are a decade, if not more, away; but one thing is for sure, education is changing on the horizon and it is an exciting journey ahead.

In this episode, I sit down with Byron King - former VP for learning and teaching at the Boys’ Prep, now working at Study Hall, an AI EdTech company. In this episode we talk about the specifics of what we have been up to from 2023 to 2024 when it comes to AI innovation in the classroom and sharing knowledge and best practice amongst all staff.

In this episode, we look back over the past 20 months (2022 to 2024) and we shine a spotlight on the early days of exploring AI solutions in the classroom. This is the first episode in a three-part series that showcases Surbiton High School’s practical research in AI.