Tony Little, Head of Eton College boys’ school in the UK is due to step down from the post this summer in order to move on to the new role of Chief Education Officer at the international school group GEMS Education later this year.During the Global Education and Skills Forum 2015 held in Dubai this week, Mr Little offered his thoughts on the success of Eton College and how he plans to transfer some of those lessons to the schools in the GEMS Education group of international schools.Measuring successFirstly, Mr Little expressed his concerns about what he described as the “grip of measurement” in which he believes schools and parents are in are the clutches of in the UK. Changes to the secondary school performance tables this year, i.e. the decision not to include some of the international GCSEs in the tables, saw top public schools such as Eton College score 0 per cent in the benchmark measure of five good GCSEs including English and maths.“We’re stuck in an age of measurement,” he said, “obsessed by league table performance.” Instead, Mr Little offered an alternative method of judging a school’s academic success. “My measure, in my school,” he said, “is where young people get to in university and where they get to beyond that, it’s a longer measurement. And that has a greater impact on their lives.”Bottling the Eton effectWhen asked how the successes of Eton College could be replicated, Mr Little described the contribution the College has made to a selection of local state schools in the area.“Aspects of what Eton does can be replicated and one of the ways is (for example there are schools in the Slough area with which we have a relationship) some of the habits, or the way we encourage young people to think, have been looked at, taken away, repackaged and used in a completely different environment in non-selective comprehensives in quite a tough area.”Mr Little used the example of a speaking programme designed and managed by a group of Eton’s seventeen year-old boys whereby industry, political and business leaders are invited to the school to speak.“They get used to this being normal,” said Mr Little, “and that’s an extraordinarily powerful thing. You don’t think twice about inviting a distinguished journalist or a politician to the school. You just do it.”  The same initiative has been employed in an Eton partner state school and has been particularly effective, he said.Single-sex schoolingDuring the conversation, Mr Little was quizzed on his attitudes towards single-sex schooling in comparison to co-educational learning environments. He expressed the belief that, in a single-sex environment, children were allowed the freedom for their, “innocence to last a little longer.”"What does strike me” he said, “is that in a single-sex environment, particularly at the age of 13,14,15, there is an opportunity for both boys and girls to be themselves for longer. To be 'boyish' for longer, to be young girls."One of the real challenges we face as parents and particularly in schools, and this has accelerated in the last few years, is the growing apparent sophistication of children at a younger age. The need even at the age of nine now, pretty graphic sex education because of the pressures that are being put on girls particularly, from the age 11 and upwards."Moving to an international environmentMr Little expressed his excitement about his imminent move to his new role as Chief Education Officer at the GEMS Education group of international schools.“What attracts me to the role is the fact that, and particularly with GEMS - which is this dramatically growing company - I think it exemplifies a great new momentum in world education. I suspect we’re going to see more, bigger international commercially driven groups which have phenomenal opportunity to do good.”“For example, one of the areas that GEMS is involved with is in rural schools in India. The capacity there to produce a different quality of opportunity for whom the education provision is pretty abject is a tremendous step forward.”Tony Little will take up his position later this year with the international school group GEMS Education.