School of Education; Honorary Fellowship
James Noble-Rogers was born in 1961 and raised in Harpenden, Hertfordshire where he attended Crabtree Lane Junior and Manland Secondary schools. After modest academic achievement in his formative years, he went on to receive an Honours degree in Humanities from Hatfield Polytechnic, a Master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Nottingham and most recently a Postgraduate Diploma with distinction from City University, London.
James began his working life in a betting shop, followed by full-time employment in a variety of bars, off-licenses and similar environments. From 1987 until 1996 he worked as a civil servant on policies relating to teacher education, local authority funding and grant-maintained schools. He then worked at the newly formed Teacher Training Agency until 2000 where he was responsible for distributing student number places to ITT providers, including the University of Wolverhampton.
In 2004, he became Head of Governance at the RNIB where he introduced a new membership and governance system that ensured authority within the organisation rested with individual blind & partially sighted people themselves, described on Radio 4 as the most important strategic change at RNIB for more than 20 years. He is currently Executive Director of the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET), where he seeks to promote and develop higher-education’s contribution to teacher education and education research.
James is a keen cyclist, traveller, reader and socialiser, and has been Chair of a local charity in St. Albans but his greatest achievement to date is his marriage to Bea in July 2008.
