Our Headmaster

James Coulson was born in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England. His family moved around frequently due to his father´s work for the oil industry and he lived in multiple locations in central, northern and southern England during his childhood.

James also attended boarding school at Kings´ College in Madrid, Spain. He worked from an early age and completed high school via night classes, going on to study a B.A. (Hons.) in English Literature / Modern Arts at Kingston University, Surrey before completing his Masters Degree in Film & Theatre Theory from Sheffield University, his PGCSE from the University of East Anglia and his Postgraduate Diploma in International Education from Bath University.

James began his teaching career as a CELTA-qualified TEFL teacher in Greece, the Czech Republic and Spain. After graduating to the government´s Fast Track programme, he worked for several years in the English state system and then moved with his young family to Chile where he was made Headteacher of Saint John´s School, Concepción in 2012. He implemented both the PYP and the MYP programmes at Saint John´s during his time there. Having long admired & been familiar with Northlands, he finally assumed the role of Headmaster there in 2017.

His educational philosophy is that Education is not just a means, it is an end in itself. The primary function (among many, many functions) of a school is to prepare students for life. A large majority of them will enter university as part of that life, so they must be prepared thoroughly for both entering university and also for being at university over several years, furnishing them with the skills and the abilities needed in order to ensure their success. But our responsibilities do not end there by any means. We must ensure that our students leave us with the values, the social conscience, the interpersonal skills & the sense of purpose & direction necessary in order to ensure not only professional success but also that most elusive & nebulous of prizes – happiness. Our students demand success and we must rise absolutely to this demand. But they must not only be successful people, they must also become good ones: true citizens, fully-rounded human beings.

While fully understanding the enormous importance of academic results, he still believes passionately that schools are not primarily about passing, they are about learning. The world continues to evolve – technologically, culturally – at a much faster rate than the evolution of education & this is a yawning gap which we must strive to narrow. We must now open ourselves to a new focus for education.

His pastimes are: film; literature; swimming, running and martial arts; cooking; travel; he is a passable singer and a tragically deficient dancer.