The Rt Hon the Lord Lingfield is the Chairman of the Chartered Institution for Further Education and formerly Pro-Chancellor of Brunel University. His appointment as Knight Principal of the Imperial Society of Knights Bachelor was approved by HM The Queen in 2006 and he became Knight President in 2012. He was knighted (as Sir Robert Balchin) for services to education in January 1993. He was Director General of St John Ambulance for five years in the 1980s and was a senior education policy adviser to the Government throughout the early ’90s.
He devised and ran the national programme for autonomy in state schools and was Chairman of the Grant-Maintained School Foundation from 1989 – ’98. He was the founding vice-chairman of the Funding Agency for Schools. He chaired the Commission on Special Needs in Education for the Rt Hon David Cameron from 2006 to 2010 and chaired a government Review of Further Education which produced the 2012 Lingfield Report.
He has been a teacher, lecturer and company director and is the Founder Chairman of The English Schools’ Orchestra, the League of Mercy (a charity which encourages and recognises voluntary work in caring for the sick) and of the stroke rehabilitation charity ARNI. He is also the Honorary Colonel for Cadet Music nationally.
Lord Lingfield was created a Knight of the Order of St John in 1984 and has a number of foreign awards. He has several honorary doctorates and fellowships, including that of the City and Guilds of London Institute. He was appointed a Peer for Life of the United Kingdom in 2010 and has sat on various parliamentary committees since then.