Knighthoods for university heads

Three university vice-chancellors and a head teacher have received knighthoods in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.

Honours to people working in education make up 10% of the total, including school support staff.

Paul Grant, head of Robert Clack Science College in Dagenham, Essex, is knighted - and 16 other head teachers are among those honoured.

The vice-chancellors at Aberdeen, Southampton and London South Bank universities are to be knighted.

Head teacher Paul Grant is credited with restoring discipline to a failing Essex secondary school.

In his first week as head teacher at Robert Clack School in Dagenham, Mr Grant excluded 300 pupils in a drive to consistently enforce discipline.

But last year the proportion of students achieving five or more good GCSEs was just above the average and the government named it as one of 12 schools "excelling against the odds".

Literary critic Professor Christopher Ricks, who recently retired as Oxford University's professor of poetry is knighted, as is Oxford's professor of economics, Professor David Hendry.

Science and engineering

Professor Deian Hopkin, vice-chancellor of London's South Bank University, is knighted for services to higher education and skills.

He chairs Universities UK's Skills Task Force and is a government adviser on the reform of 14-19 qualifications, higher level skills and the Children's Plan.

He also chairs the student charity UNIAID and is vice-chairman of the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics.

The historian and scholar and principal of Aberdeen University, Professor C Duncan Rice, receives a knighthood.

Professor Bill Wakeham, vice-chancellor of Southampton University, is knighted for services to chemical engineering and higher education.

He was previously deputy rector of Imperial College London, where he oversaw the merger of the university with several medical schools, and is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and of the Institution of Chemical Engineers.

Several scientists are also honoured, including Professor Anne Dell, Professor of Carbohydrate Biochemistry at Imperial College London, who is made a CBE.

Professor Lynn Gladden OBE, head of Cambridge University's department of chemical engineering and biotechnology, becomes a CBE for services to science.

There are also honours for teachers and other school staff, including Barbara Bell, a classics teacher at Clifton High School in Bristol, for her work to raise the profile of the subject.

Cynthia Cowley, a caretaker and lunchtime supervisor at St James and St John Church of England School in Akeley, Buckinghamshire, becomes an MBE, as does Janet Dean, a school crossing warden at Heswell Primary School in the Wirral.

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