Stephen Drew is Headteacher of Brentwood County High School in Essex. Stephen has been a teacher of history in secondary schools since 1997, working at schools in Tower Hamlets, Suffolk and Essex. Between 2002 and 2012 Stephen worked at Passmores Academy in Harlow, Essex. In September 2012 Stephen started his first headship at BCHS, achieving his aspiration of being a head before his 40th birthday – which came in November 2012.

Stephen is committed to ensuring the highest possible success for all young people who he is responsible for. He believes that as a society we are far too quick to negatively judge young people and their families, forgetting in a quite shocking fashion what being young is actually like. Stephen believes that adults have an absolute responsibility to ensure that young people are given the chances they need to succeed and to learn from the mistakes that everyone inevitably makes when they are young. In order to do this we need to ensure that we create structures and environments that support families and children to achieve the high aspirations that everyone has either for themselves or their children. This approach directs everything he does as a teacher.

These beliefs were seen in great depth during the BAFTA award winning Channel 4 documentary series “Educating Essex” made about Passmores Academy where Stephen was Deputy Headteacher. Stephen has been discussed education on BBC Breakfast, Daybreak, Radio Five Live and Channel 5 News. Stephen was interviewed about for a Radio 4 Word Of Mouth programme on conflict resolution, and took part in a discussion for an edition of Nightwaves on Radio 3 about the future of the teaching of history in schools. Stephen was also a mentor for one of the programmes in the 2012 series of Channel 4’s youth campaigning programme, Battlefront. In 2014 Stephen’s new 4 part series “Mr Drew’s School for Boys” aired on Channel 4 to great critical acclaim.