Kevin Hamblin

Group Chief Executive & Executive Principal, South Gloucestershire & Stroud College
CEO, SGS Academy trust

Kevin Hamblin has 30 years’ experience in education and training including eight in Industry and 23 years in FE – 18 years of which has been at Principal and CEO level.

Kevin was appointed Principal and Chief Executive of Filton College in 2001 and took the college through a successful merger with Stroud College in 2012. Both Colleges were dissolved, and South Gloucestershire and Stroud College was constituted. Kevin was appointed CEO.
In 2015, Sir David Carter asked Kevin to form SGS Academy Trust to support a failing secondary school – Forest High School – in the Forest of Dean. Kevin is the CEO of the Academy Trust.

SGS Academy Trust oversaw the successful submission and approval of two Free Schools – one a University Technical College at Berkeley Green, Gloucestershire. The second is a Special Free School (SGS Pegasus) in Patchway, north Bristol for children with Autism. Both opened in 2017. Forest High School is now out of special measures, with the two new schools expecting their first Ofsted in 2020/21.
Kevin is a Director of AoC (Association of Colleges) Sport and Chairs England Colleges Football Association.
SGS College is judged by Ofsted as ‘Good’ with ‘outstanding features’, namely Leadership and Management, Student Support, Business and IT, Sport and Creative and Performing Art. Financial Health at the college is assessed as ‘Good’.

Academically, there are 3600+ 16-18 learners, 1900+ apprentices; 350 HE Undergraduate students, 450 adults working towards HE-level professional qualifications; 130 full time 14-16’s and 10,000+ (p/t) adults on a wide variety of courses in the Gloucestershire and West of England areas. The College has a total income of £37m, and employs 850 staff across three main campus – Stroud; Filton and Stoke Gifford, Bristol; with two satellite centres one for Art and the other for Animal Conservation in Bristol. A new site at Berkeley, Gloucestershire is being developed into the Gloucestershire Science and Technology park focusing on Sustainability, Low Carbon Energy Generation and Storage and AI / 5G / Robotics and Automation.