James Tooley, PhD, assumed the role of Vice-Chancellor at The University of Buckingham in October 2020, concurrently serving as Professor of Educational Entrepreneurship and Policy. Prior to this, he spent two decades as a professor of education policy at Newcastle University, with intermittent periods fostering entrepreneurial education projects in the developing world. In addition to academic stints at the Universities of Oxford and Manchester, James is renowned for groundbreaking research on low-cost private education, earning accolades such as the gold prize in the International Finance Corporation/Financial Times Private Sector Development Competition and a Templeton Prize for Free Market Solutions to Poverty. His influential book, The Beautiful Tree: A personal journey into how the world’s poorest are educating themselves, emerged as a best-seller in India and received the Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Prize. James has further extended his impact by co-founding low-cost schools in various countries, including Ghana (Omega Schools), India (Cadmus Education), Honduras (Cadmus Academies), and England (Independent Grammar Schools). Actively engaged with associations of low-cost private schools, he serves as the Patron of the Association of Formidable Educational Development in Nigeria and the Chief Mentor of the National Independent Schools Alliance in India.