Aatif Hassan

Chair & Founder, Dukes Education

“I’m not saying it’s going to be; I am saying it is.”

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Aatif Hassan was expelled from school. He has dyslexia and ADHD. He now runs one of the largest private education groups in the UK — Dukes Education — with over twenty UK schools, twenty-five international schools across Europe, and a deliberate refusal to use the word ‘SEND’. This conversation is about why.

In This Episode

• ⟶ Why he has never been able to answer the ‘is there a number’ question on selling Dukes — and what permanent capital allows him to build that fixed-life investors cannot
• ⟶ The deliberate refusal of the word ‘SEND’ — why Cavendish uses ‘unique learning profiles’ and why the language of labels cuts against what the schools are actually trying to do
• ⟶ The 100% mission at Cavendish — that every child ends up in sustained employment, vocational training or university
• ⟶ Dyslexia as a superpower — simplicity of thought, and the ‘if I can’t explain it, nobody else can understand it’ principle
• ⟶ The fifteen-captains-on-the-pitch test — why he believes any of his top team could run the organisation
• ⟶ COVID as a near-death moment — paying staff 100% when 80% was the option, and the bank negotiations that ran into the small hours
• ⟶ The acquisition that almost broke the company — Cardiff Sixth Form College, taken on at Charities Commission and Welsh Government request with no access to the P&L