2012 Oxford Education Society Annual Lecture

The second annual Oxford Education Society Lecture will be delivered by Sir Peter Lampl on Friday 14th September 2012 in the Simpkins Lee Lecture Theatre, Lady Margaret Hall.

An enthusiastic audience – consisting of OES members, staff and students of the Department of Education as well as Oxford alumni visiting for the Annual Alumni Weekend – was welcomed by Professor Anne Edwards, Director of the Department of Education, to hear Sir Peter talk about why he set up the Sutton Trust, discussing the Trust’s key research and findings and major projects.

He talked about the Education Endowment Foundation which was established to improve the performance of children on free school meals in the country’s lowest performing schools and went on to outline the future direction of the Sutton Trust and the Education Endowment Foundation and his thoughts on improving social mobility in the UK.

Sir Peter and Lady Susan Lampl joined the audience after the lecture at a Drinks Reception held in the Department of Education.

A video and an audio recording of the lecture can be accessed on the University of Oxford’s Alumni Weekend Podcasts site.

About Sir Peter Lampl

Sir Peter Lampl is acknowledged to be the UK’s leading educational philanthropist, having personally invested tens of millions of pounds and devoted the last 15 years to strategic educational philanthropy.

Peter is the founder and chairman of the Sutton Trust which aims to improve social mobility through education. The Trust has funded over 100 research studies in the areas of social mobility and education but it is primarily a ‘do tank’. The Trust has initiated and supported a wide range of projects, from early years, through primary and secondary schooling and access to higher education and the professions. The most promising of these have been thoroughly evaluated and as appropriate scaled up with Government or private funding.

In April of 2011, in competition with 15 other charities, the Sutton Trust as the lead charity supported by Impetus Trust was awarded an endowment of £125 million by the Government to improve the performance of poor children in the worst performing schools. Peter is chairman of the Education Endowment Foundation, the new foundation set up by the Sutton Trust to manage this programme. The Foundation intends to spend over £200 million over the next 15 years, made up of the original endowment of £125 million, plus income from the endowment and fundraising.

Before establishing the Sutton Trust, Peter was the founder and chairman of the Sutton Company, a Private Equity firm with offices in New York, London and Munich and became one of the 200 wealthiest people in the UK.

Peter holds a Bachelor and a Masters degree from Oxford University and a Masters degree from the London Business School.