The University of Warwick awarded honorary degrees to a number of outstanding individuals in January 2023 as part of its winter graduation ceremonies. One of the recipients of the honorary degrees is Dr. Peter Kent.

Dr Peter Kent was headteacher of Lawrence Sheriff School in Rugby (an 11-19 school with approximately 1000 pupils, including a sixth form of 380) from 1999 until his retirement in December 2021. Throughout his 23 years as headteacher, the school maintained an Ofsted grading of Outstanding. Lawrence Sheriff became a National Teaching School in 2012 and was named one of the government’s National Teaching School Hubs in 2021. The school worked in close partnership with the Warwick Centre for Teacher Education in all of its teaching school roles.

Having completed his doctorate in School Culture during the early years of his headship, Peter worked part-time for the UK National College for School Leadership for several years and was one of the team of authors who prepared their modules on Personalising Learning, Closing the Gap and reducing in-school variation. He also wrote some of the modules for the National Professional Qualification for Headship.

He was actively involved in the Association of School and College Leaders and was ASCL President from September 2014 - August 2015. In subsequent years he became a member of the Ethical Leadership Commission and contributed to their 2019 report Navigating the Educational Moral Maze.

As a result of his work with ASCL, Peter joined the Executive of the International Confederation of Principals, the representative body for professional leadership associations across the world. Having served as the European member of their Executive, he was elected President during their convention in Shanghai in 2019 and took on the role in January 2022. As President of ICP he works with school leaders from across five continents as well as a range of governments and international organisations such as the OECD.