John M Hackett

John Hackett was born in Raynes Park – a leafy suburb of London – in 1955. He started taking trumpet lessons when he was seven years old and set out on the path to becoming a professional trumpeter.

While at the local high school (which is now a block of luxury apartments) he continued taking Trumpet lessons. An eccentric, strict but well loved music teacher encouraged John to audition for a Junior Exhibition at the Royal College of Music. He was accepted and so for the next six years Saturday mornings were taken up with music lessons at the RCM.

After taking A-levels he went on to study Trumpet at the Royal Academy of Music with Sidney Ellison for four years.

The other love of his life was (and still is!) Mathematics and Science and while studying Trumpet he also began a Degree in Mathematics and Physics with the Open University where he gained a First Class Honours and won the DeBroigle Quantum Mechanics prize.

He was a professional musician and teacher for some years including teaching Brass at the Girls’ Day School Trust’s (GDST) Croydon High School for Girls (CHS). While still at CHS as a peripatetic Brass teacher he started looking after the school’s computers. This was in the very early days of school IT: when he started managing their systems there were two old networks of RM Nimbus 186’s (remember them?) one of which was located in what used to be a changing room for the gymnasium!

After about a year he was appointed Head of IT and Network Manager at CHS.

After eight years of continual development they had an integrated network of PCs and Apple Macs combining both curriculum and administration clients running over cat5 cabling with a fibre optic gigabit backbone – one of the first schools in the GDST to do this. CHS also had a Junior department with its own computer suite and administration offices on the same network as the Senior school. As the first of the GDST’s schools to experiment with thin-clients and to have leased line internet access CHS was recognized as one of the GDST’s lead schools for IT.

While teaching there he also went back to his studies with the Open University – this time a Masters Degree in Computing.

After almost ten year’s teaching John Hackett decided to go it alone and take up opportunities to work as an IT consultant building on his experience in Education and the Arts.

He is now Director of Icon Information Systems Ltd, lives with his violinist wife in London and still enjoys playing for several amateur orchestras in London including the Kensington Symphony Orchestra and, as Principal Trumpet, with the Salomon and Covent Garden Chamber orchestras.