AoBSO President

Sir Roger Fry CBE

AoBSO are delighted to be supported by our President Sir Roger Fry CBE.

Roger Fry was born in Portsmouth, England, during World War 2 where he was educated at Primary and Grammar Schools and continued his education in the University of London. He graduated at King’s College and trained as a teacher at the Institute of Education.

His teaching career soon took him abroad and he became in volved in founding a British School in Madrid in 1969 and was its Head for twelve years until 1981. From 1981 until 2019 he founded ten more British schools overseas in places as divergent as China and Central America and chaired the Group that promoted them. He also established a multi academy trust of schools in England based in Portsmouth with schools in Hampshire, Sussex and Berkshire. For 25 years he was a Governor of the Royal Grammar School Worcester and is now its Patron.

In 1996 he was elected Chair of the Council of British Independent Schools in the European Communities (COBISEC), a role he held until 2011. During that time, he transformed the Association into the Council of British International Schools (COBIS) and its membership increased fourfold. He was its President from 2011 to 2021.

As Chair of COBIS he lobbied the Department for Education for the creation of a recognised inspection scheme for British Schools Overseas and this was established in 2010.

He was elected Chair of AoBSO in 2019 and formalised it as a British entity in the form of a not-for-profit association of British Schools registered as a company limited by guarantee at Companies House. In 2023 he retired as Chair and was elected President.

For his work in favour of British education abroad he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Portsmouth University, and he also became an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College Oxford. In 1993 he was awarded the OBE and in 2002 he was honoured with a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). He was Knighted for services to British education overseas in 2012.