College principal to leave after overseeing recovery

THE principal of The Henley College is leaving after eight years.

Satwant Deol has overseen improvements at the college, ensuring it retained its “good” rating from the education watchdog Ofsted.

When she arrived in 2016, the college had a shortage of students, which contributed to a deficit of £1.6 million.

Mrs Deol and the board of governors put together a recovery plan as the college was threatened with government intervention.

She said: “They could have closed us down and merged us with another college. We went through a lot of heartache and grief.

“Two years ago, we came out of recovery and we’ve got a ‘good’ Ofsted rating with some ‘outstanding’ features. We were a whisker away from overall ‘outstanding’.

“Student numbers have gone up by 25 per cent and we are now financially outstanding.

“Our main aims were to make sure that our courses were profitable and we had the right number of students on courses.

“We introduced 16 new courses and we kept some of the small courses like languages. The IT systems were not fit for purpose and we had leaking roofs. The buildings were not good.

“We have put well over £3.5 million into our infrastructure.

“We’ve got new electronics labs. We started a digital suite as well with money from the Government.

“We got quite a lot of government funding and we developed a new creative media suite with 100 Apple macs.”

Mrs Deol moved to the UK from India when she was 10. She took a part-time master’s course at Aston University in Birmingham and started lecturing part-time in computing.

She said: “I wanted to develop young minds and I saw their creativity shine through. I thought, ‘This is such a lovely career’.”

She was headhunted to work at Coventry University as a systems developer and was then made head of the computing and programming department. In 1996 she moved to Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College, where she was vice-principal for curriculum and quality and director of planning and innovation.

She was then vice-principal for curriculum and quality at Stratford-upon-Avon College.

She was managing director for education and skills at Highbury College in Portsmouth from 2014 to 2016 before moving to Henley.

Mrs Deol said: “When I came to this country, I couldn’t speak a word of English.

“My family came to Nottingham and I was never meant to stay on in education because my English was weak.

“It took me several years to learn the language and the culture. I left school and went to night school to do my A-levels.

“I started working at an organisation called Navy Army Air Force as an administrator and I thought, ‘Is this going to be my life?’

“For Asian women, our lives are supposed to be you get married. You were never expected to go to university but I was fortunate enough to have a teacher who was my north star and she saw something in me.

“I was lucky that my parents did support me to get to university.”

Mrs Deol said the highlight of her time at The Henley College was seeing the students progress.

She said: “The students are first and foremost our focus. Ninety seven per cent of our students go on to university or further education work.

“We’re becoming more and more the college of first choice. We’ve got about 1,000 students at A-level and 1,000 doing diploma courses.

Mrs Deol has decided to take a career break and spend more time with her family as well as enjoy her hobbies of reading, walking and travelling.

She will also study a part-time coaching course at the Henley Business School.

She received several cards from students and flowers from college teaching staff to bid her farewell and there will be a celebration at the end of term.