Sir Cyril Taylor
Social entrepreneur and adviser to 10 education secretaries who promoted specialist academies
SIR CYRIL TAYLOR, who has died aged 82, was a self-made millionaire and “social entrepreneur” who became the driving force behind the development of City Technology Colleges – later the Academy system – as an adviser to 10 Conservative and Labour education secretaries over two decades.
From a handful of CTCS when Kenneth Baker first launched them in the late 1980s, there are now almost 3,000 specialist schools and academies. Taylor is credited with having raised £350 million for them, from more than 700 sponsors.
Taylor came to state education having made a success of his American Institute for Foreign Study, organising summer campuses at European universities for American high school students, and vice versa. Founding the AIFS in 1964 with two other young Procter & Gamble executives, he twice sold and bought it back, and by its 50th anniversary more than 1.5 million students had enrolled.
A committed Conservative who gave up his party membership in 1997 so he could go on advising Tony Blair’s government, Taylor in the mid-1980s was a member of the Thatcherite Centre for Policy Studies, and deputy Tory leader on the Greater London Council.
His opposition to her abolition of the GLC led Margaret Thatcher at one point to dismiss him as a “wet”. But she was aware of his abilities and after the GLC was wound up in 1986 she asked him to help tackle the growing problem of youth unemployment.
He organised a CPS conference on the issue, and from it came the idea of City Technology Colleges, providing technology-focused state education for children in urban areas, with backing from the private sector.
Baker, the Education Secretary, took up the idea, Taylor was appointed an unpaid special adviser and in 1987 he established the City Technology Colleges Trust (later the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust).
Although sponsors such as Michael Ashcroft and Sir Philip Harris got the CTC programme off the ground, the outlay of £2 million needed to sponsor a school deterred many potential backers, so Taylor devised a new model under which a CTC could be launched with only £100,000 in sponsorship.
Taylor advised Baker, John Macgregor, Kenneth Clarke, John Patten and Gillian Shephard on taking the programme forward. Mrs Shephard encouraged him to take to John Major his idea that all schools should be treated as CTCS – the germ of the Academy concept.
With Labour in power, Taylor secured continuing support for specialist schools from David Blunkett, Estelle Morris, Charles Clarke, Ruth Kelly and Alan Johnson. In 2005 his Trust was made the lead body to support 400 specialist academies to replace underperforming schools in socially disadvantaged areas.
Taylor stepped down from the Trust, and as a special adviser, when Gordon Brown succeeded Blair as prime minister. He took on a new issue: the poor educational attainment of children in care.
In his book A Good School for Every Child (2009), he called for major reforms, including more boarding schools for children in care and better training for foster parents.
Taylor’s other educational success was an offshoot of his American Institute for Foreign Study: Richmond, the American International University in London. He founded it in 1977, chaired its trustees for almost 30 years and up to his death was its chancellor. Richmond today plays host to 1,200 students from 100 countries.
Cyril Julian Hebden Taylor was born in Leeds on May 14 1935, the son of Methodist missionaries in the then Belgian Congo; his father died before Cyril was born, leaving his mother to bring up him and his four sisters.
When he was six months old his mother returned to the Congo. He followed, learning to speak Kiluba before he could manage English. They returned to Leeds when he was six, and the family later moved to London where for a time he attended St Marylebone Grammar School.
Leaving Roundhay School in Leeds in 1954, he was commissioned into the East Surrey Regiment for National Service. He was seconded to the King’s African Rifles, commanding a platoon in Kenya during the Mau Mau emergency.
In 1956 Taylor went up to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to read History. His tutor was Robert Runcie, later Archbishop of Canterbury, who in time would recommend him to Mrs Thatcher.
Runcie encouraged Taylor in his ambition to take an MBA at Harvard Business School. His first entrepreneurial venture was in the long vacation of 1957, chartering a DC6 to fly to New York friends wanting to work in America during the summer.
Taylor gained his MBA in 1961 and was recruited as a brand manager in the advertising department at Procter & Gamble’s headquarters in Cincinnati.
He came up with the idea of the American Institute for Foreign Study helping his future wife organise a school educational trip to France. Discovering an untapped demand, he spent his 1964 summer holiday setting up study programmes for American high school students at universities across Europe.
He left Procter & Gamble that September to launch the AIFS. By 1968 nearly 5,000 American students were attending summer campuses abroad, including at St Andrews, Durham, Oxford and Cambridge.
In 1969 Taylor and his partners sold AIFS to the National Student Marketing Company; they bought it back in 1977. The purchase included Camp America, under which thousands of British and other foreign students travelled to the US to work as camp counsellors. AIFS was floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 1986, but bought back by Taylor and one of his partners in 1990. He remained its chairman.
Another organisation, Au Pair in America, followed in 1986, being given legal status by President Clinton; since then over 90,000 students have participated.
Taylor was active in politics at Cambridge, then became Conservative constituency vice-chairman in Kensington & Chelsea. He fought Huddersfield East in February 1974, and Keighley that October, losing by 3,081 votes.
In 1977 he was elected GLC member for Ruislip Northwood. He chaired the council’s Professional & General Services Committee, then after Ken Livingstone took control in 1981 was opposition spokesman for, in turn, employment, transport and policy and resources. From 1983 he was deputy leader of the opposition.
In 1989 Taylor bought at auction a garden square near his Kensington home to save it from developers who wanted to build an underground car park. With the designer Wilf Simms, he replanted it and in 1991 Lexham Square beat 100 other entrants to take first prize in the All London Garden Squares Competition.
At various times he was president of Ruislip Northwood Conservatives; vice president of the Alumni Council, Harvard Business School; chairman of Lexham Gardens Residents’ Association; a council member of Westfield College, London and the Royal College of Music; a governor of Holland Park comprehensive, and a trustee of the Prince’s Charities.
Unusually, Taylor received two knighthoods: a Knight Bachelor in 1989, and a GBE from Blair’s government in 2004. He was High Sheriff of Greater London in 1996.
His books include: The New Guide to Study Abroad: USA (1969); The Elected Member’s Guide for Reducing Public Expenditure (1980); A Realistic Plan for London Transport (1982); Reforming London’s Government (1984); Raising Educational Standards (1990); Education, Education, Education: 10 years on with Tony Blair (2007); and How English Universities Could Learn from the American Higher Education System (2009).
In 1965 Cyril Taylor married Judy Denman, who survives him with a daughter.
Sir Cyril Taylor, born May 14 1935, died January 30 2018