There were only two slight problems with my reasoning. First, I was only 24 and I did not have a clue about how to start a business and, second, I knew nothing about fire protection. Nevertheless, I decided it was an opportunity I could not miss and within months I had negotiated some huge contracts for my company. Looking back now, I must admit it seems so strange. I myself would not do business with a wet-behind-the-ears 24-year-old. To put it mildly, I had extremely good fortune and it was not long before I spotted an even more promising opportunity for the fire protection of structural steelwork. At the time, mineral fibre and cement-based products were used and were aesthetically dreadful. I knew that if you could find some hard, decorative way of providing fire protection to steelwork then it would be a major improvement. After researching the issue, I discovered a fire-protective paint that was to transform my business and my life.
Although I did not realise it at the time, I had actually taken on a pioneering role in trying to solve a massive problem that the world had; indeed, a problem that is still evident today. We all watched with horror when the World Trade Center collapsed in 2001. This happened because the steelwork in the building had become so hot that it lost its strength, leading to the collapse of the structure.
These days, many of the world’s biggest structures use the fire-protection technology that my company, Nullifire, was championing 30 years ago. At the time, of course, the Establishment was absolutely against the paradigm shift we were driving, saying things like, ‘it won’t work’, ‘it cannot happen’, ‘there is no legislation to support it’. Goodness knows why, but none of this fazed me. I never really thought about failure, it did not even come on to my radar screen. I guess when you are walking the tightrope everything is fine, providing you do not look down. Indeed, I never looked down, I was not even conscious that there was a down. As far as I was concerned, this was something the world needed, so I was going to give it to them. In the end, the product was a fantastic success and it resulted in architects having the opportunity to design large buildings in a much more attractive way. Most of the recently built sports stadia and airports now use this technology.
One thing I learned from those early days was that it is an awful lot easier to sell a concept if someone has done the legwork before. When you are the first person to come up with an idea, you have to try to educate people about the concept and possibilities. This is a long, slow and hard, but ultimately worthwhile, process. Every day all around us we see this sort of thing happening. A hundred or more years ago, if you had gone to an optician with the concept of laser eye surgery, you would have been laughed out of the building. Today, it is becoming standard practice. In the same way, the structural fire-protection methods I pioneered in the mid-seventies have become standard practice around the world today.
Without a doubt, the work I did in my early career geared me up for what I am doing now; it was a great foundation for me. I have been down this path before and I know that the concepts about learning difficulties our team of experts have been developing will one day become the established view just as the discoveries we made about fire protection did. Indeed, as you will discover in this book, this process is already taking shape.
INVOLVEMENT IN EDUCATION
In 1999, a friend of mine came to me and asked if I could help get his child’s school out of financial difficulties. That school was Arnold Lodge School in Leamington Spa, which had an excellent reputation because the class sizes were small and the teachers so caring and competent. To me, it seemed tragic that my friend’s son, who had been born with difficulties and had needed a series of operations, would have to leave a school that he loved. Thus, I started negotiations to buy it.
As soon as my cousin, Gareth Newman, heard about the plight of the school, he also expressed an interest in helping and so we bought it together. This sort of altruistic gesture was typical of a man who had dedicated his whole life to helping others. Out of all the people I have met in education, Gareth is one who has greatly inspired me. He is a dedicated man who sees potential in children and would obsessively focus on helping them until he had exposed that potential. At one time, he was the youngest headmaster in Britain and subsequently had a number of headships before finally being asked to develop Corby City Technology College on a green-field site. This Institute achieved phenomenal success in helping children, and Gareth’s efforts were rewarded in 2000 when he was given a CBE for his Services to Education.
I think watching Gareth at work gave me hope that there might be more skill and ability in everyone, especially those labelled ‘thick’ or ‘stupid’. At the time we were developing Arnold Lodge School, I asked him how he had made such a difference for the children in Corby. He told me one of the most important things he discovered was the importance of encouraging children to set their own targets. Instead of being told what they needed to achieve, they felt a sense of ownership about their own progress. The other thing he said was important was the regular measurement of their progress so that both children and teachers could see what they were achieving, which they find remarkably motivating.
One day, I put it to him that, if we developed a simple online system to do exactly what he described and that all teachers could use, surely his methods could be made available nationally and help large numbers of children achieve their potential.
Following this conversation, we put together a plan to develop software that could be used to help assess children on a national scale. The dream was that we would create online tests that would be multiple-choice and fun for children to do, whether or not they were learning impaired. This would give teachers extremely important information about how they were doing compared to national averages. It was great fun working on these projects and we managed to make the assessments really enjoyable for children to do. The software developers built in some great features, including each child being able to sit a unique test. The teacher could then use this tool as often as needed to identify all the areas where each child was weak, so that they would know exactly what to teach. It also made a graph of the progress to show the real contribution the teacher was making, which was very rewarding to the often undervalued work of the teacher assigned to lower-ability groups.
As a bonus, we found children with weaker reading and writing skills showed their true ability, as multiple-choice questions more accurately identified their actual level of knowledge in the subject being tested.
Another feature we built in, probably triggered by my concern for children with learning issues, was that, if a child was struggling to answer the questions, the computer would simplify them so that the child did not become stressed or discouraged. Conversely, the particularly bright child, without realising it was happening, might well have the level of the assessment taken up a notch if all the answers in the early stages were being answered correctly. Thus, within minutes of the completion of this instant-access system the teacher would have a full audit of the knowledge and needs of each member of the class. What a way to drive progress in the classroom, and what an easy way to bring out the best in each and every one of a large class! Not only did Gareth and I get a real buzz out of it but so did the children we worked with using the product we finally called GOAL – Global Online Assessment of Learning.
So the first challenge we had was that the Labour government at that time had made wonderful promises about how rapidly they were going to connect all schools to the internet with broadband connectivity. We soon realised that, as is often the case, they did not always live up to their word and it would be several years before every school had the capability to use the products we had developed. But what also surprised us was how scared some teachers were to try a new concept. Many resisted it as they had their tried and trusted methods for assessing children, which, in our view, gave them very little valuable data to help them steer children through the learning process.
Nevertheless, the company continued to grow and went on to become Educational Development International (EDI plc) and merge with the London Chamber of Commerce Examination and Industry Examination Board (LCCIB). It has since become part of Pearson plc.
In 2005, the school that had made the most progress in the country – the Holy Family