Sir Cyril Taylor was born in Yorkshire, England in 1935 and educated at St Marylebone Grammar School, London and Roundhay School, Leeds. Awarded a National Service Commission at age 18 with the King's African Rifles he served as a platoon commander in the Mau Mau emergency campaign in Kenya 1954-56. He then took an honours degree in history at Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1959 and was awarded the Charles Bell Scholarship by the London Chamber of Commerce to study for the Master of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is married with one daughter.

After attending Harvard Business School, he worked in brand management for Procter & Gamble at the headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1964 he founded the American Institute for Foreign Study, the Anglo-American international educational company of which he is still the Chairman. Group companies include the College Division, Camp America, Au Pair in America, the American Council for International Studies (ACIS) and the Summer Institute for the Gifted. AIFS has offices in the US, UK, Germany, Poland, South Africa and Australia.

In 1970, AIFS established Richmond, the American International University in London. Richmond is a unique, non-profit university with 1,000 full time students from 100 countries accredited by both the American and British education authorities. Overall, AIFS organises programmes for 40,000 students each year with annual tuition income of 180 million dollars a year and celebrated the enrolment of its one millionth student in 2001.

Since 1987 Sir Cyril has served as Chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) and as Advisor to ten successive Secretaries of State for Education on specialist schools and academies, serving in a voluntary unpaid capacity. In 2005, the SSAT was made the lead body to support the 200 City Academies to be established on the sites of underperforming schools in socially disadvantaged areas. The specialist schools initiative (technology, arts, sports and languages colleges; business & enterprise; science; engineering; mathematics & computing; humanities and music) has established 2,600 specialist secondary schools, 80% of all English secondary schools, educating to an increasingly high standard 2.6 million children. The intake of ability for specialist schools is similar to non-specialist yet in 2005 they achieved 58% 5+ A*-C grades at GCSE compared to only 47% for other schools. Specialist schools both emphasise their chosen specialist subjects, as well as teaching the national curriculum. Over 800 private sector sponsors have contributed more than 250 million pounds to the initiative.