What if your true passion was hiding in plain sight, waiting for a spark to ignite it? Join us as we sit down with Dr. Neil Hopkin, a school leader whose journey from Nottingham to Dubai is filled with laughter, wisdom, and transformative experiences. Discover how Dr. Neil's career in microelectronics took a surprising turn towards education, influenced by his inspirational father and a yearning for creative pursuits.
Dr Neil shares his insights on the importance of aligning with an organisation’s ethos and how his role as Director of Education at Fortes Education embodies this principle. On a personal note, Dr Neil touches on the joy of family time, his passion for travel, and the pivotal moments that led him to embrace teaching—a profession he once resisted but now sees as his true calling.
Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need, to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.
Visit our website https://linktr.ee/teachmiddleeast.
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Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson
Connect with Leisa Grace:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/leisagrace
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leisagrace/
What if your true passion was hiding in plain sight, waiting for a spark to ignite it? Join us as we sit down with Dr. Neil Hopkin, a school leader whose journey from Nottingham to Dubai is filled with laughter, wisdom, and transformative experiences. Discover how Dr. Neil's career in microelectronics took a surprising turn towards education, influenced by his inspirational father and a yearning for creative pursuits.
Dr Neil shares his insights on the importance of aligning with an organisation’s ethos and how his role as Director of Education at Fortes Education embodies this principle. On a personal note, Dr Neil touches on the joy of family time, his passion for travel, and the pivotal moments that led him to embrace teaching—a profession he once resisted but now sees as his true calling.
Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need, to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.
Visit our website https://linktr.ee/teachmiddleeast.
Tweet us: https://twitter.com/teachmiddleeast
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teachmiddleeast/.
Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson
Connect with Leisa Grace:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/leisagrace
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leisagrace/
You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast connecting, developing and empowering educators.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, welcome to the Teach Middle East podcast. My name is Lisa Grace. Today I have Dr Neil Hopkins as my guest Now. Usually I ask my guests to do their intro themselves, but I've got to give Dr Neil his flowers because you know you should give people their flowers while you can. Not that he's going anywhere, but I have to say a massive thank you. Dr Neil is one of the kindest school leaders.
Speaker 2:I know, and he's going to go bright red and you're going to see at the top of his head if you're watching YouTube. But genuinely, I deal with a lot of school leaders, a lot of principals, and he's definitely among the kindest, most genuine, most authentic that I've met and I really am privileged and actually quite happy to have him on the podcast. He has a massive dry sense of humour, but I don't think he'll show you that side of him today because he's wearing his suit. But, dr Neil, it's really been a pleasure working with you over several events and even recently in Tanzania, and I am ecstatic to have you on the podcast, welcome.
Speaker 3:Lisa Grace, I match your level of ecstasy being here. I'm an avid follower of your podcast and I'm in awe not only of your ability to actually lead us here in the region, which you do so brilliantly and modestly, but also actually just the quality of the people you have On the airplane going to Tanzania recently with you. I just caught Fiona Cottom's interview with you. I'm tremendously impressed with Fiona. I think she's a wonderful lady and it's just great to actually, you know, I learned things about her through the podcast that I wouldn't have known and that probably she wouldn't have divulged over coffee at some formal meeting. So I think it's a lovely thing that you're doing as well in this particular theme within your podcasts.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. We love to kind of unearth the people who sit behind the desk because sometimes I find that people see just one side and they form an opinion. But if you can see the many sides and the beauty and tapestry of people, you'll come to appreciate them in a really good way. So, dr Neil, where are you from?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm from Nottingham in the UK originally. I mean it's a funny question, isn't it? Because if you've been involved in international education for a while, I mean it's a funny question, isn't it? Because if you've been involved in international education for a while, the likelihood is that you will have traveled across different countries, maybe far away from home, and so it's. If people say where is home for you, I wouldn't say the UK anymore. Victoria, my wife and I and our children have made our family home here. We have a house here in Dubai, and so this is is now home. But, as you can tell from my flat vowel sounds, I'm a Nottingham lad and you know you can take the lad out of Nottingham, but you can't take Nottingham out of the lad. So that's my original home. I, in my career, I worked in all of the major cities really in the UK London and and Birmingham, manchester, etc. So, yeah, I think I'm happy at this point to say where I'm from is Dubai.
Speaker 2:Dubai. That's good, because you're from Nottingham, now Dubai resident, and do you see yourself retiring here, if ever you should retire?
Speaker 3:Well, my youngest child is four. I need to work until I'm 95. So you know, I see myself dropping dead here. You know, if I stop working before that it's a financial disaster, so I will be hit at the very end.
Speaker 2:If you guys are listening to this on Apple podcast or Spotify, please go and watch it on YouTube. I find that we've got quite a high listenership on Apple. Please go watch the YouTube, because you'll watch me crack it up. Dr Neil's sense of humor is wild. I really enjoy it. So okay, when you, at 95.
Speaker 3:They say that I have a great face for radio. That's the problem. I'm not sure I'm the person to launch the YouTube advert campaign, lisa, but we'll run with it for now no, no, you can definitely launch it.
Speaker 2:Don't watch that and it's fine. So at 95, with your similar frame. Where do you see yourself?
Speaker 3:I still see myself here at Fortis Education. I'm director of education here and I absolutely love it. I love the Moncani family that lead the organisation here and genuinely I think it's really important, isn't it, when you're working, to make sure that the ethos and the personalities and the culture and the passion of the group that you know whether it's the board or whether it's your you know if you're not a principal yet if it's your principal or so on. It's important to get that resonance with those people, because work always brings challenges. We know that. You know I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be cliched to say there are no challenges in any workspace. Of course there are, but actually overcoming those challenges is so much easier if you resonate with the people that you're reporting into and I report to the board of directors here and, uh, one of them. So I will stay here.
Speaker 3:I'm very, you know, I'm very happy to to go on youtube tape, uh, saying this is it for me. I found my home, I found the organization that I believe in, that I think you're doing great things and that level of security brings a huge wave of opportunity really in terms of your vision and how expansive you can be and how dedicated you can be, because some things, of course, are quick wins, but some things are long wins and take long investments of time, and so I've got that level of security of knowing I've found my home. So not only is my home Dubai, but my home is Fortis Education. I wouldn't want it any other way.
Speaker 2:Brilliant. Tell me a bit about Fortis Education. What is the vision and mission of that company? I know you guys have two schools currently in Dubai, but talk to me about not only the company but also the schools.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the Sunmark School and Regents International School. They're both fantastic schools, both Bso outstanding schools, uh, khj, very good schools and on the cusp of outstanding, so really marvelous uh places. They're different in identity. Regents international school is very much a community based school. It's uh, it's in the emirates. It really has uh, people are still walking to school, uh in in in a way that, um, you know, you don't always see in Dubai, so that's a wonderful thing. It's highly valued by the school community in that way as people come from the Greens to you know, to make their way into the school.
Speaker 3:Sunmark School is in JBT Wonderful school, brilliantly designed, actually really super, and both schools are really innovative in their take. That's really at the core of Ford's education is DNA. In fact, this year we were voted which school advisor most innovative school at Sunmark School, which we were delighted for, and teachers in both schools, both within Sunmark and Regents International, previously have been the best primary school educator around STEAM within their respective years, and we find that that drive for innovation that lives right at the core of what we do has led to a whole array of signature programs that we offer around STEAM, of course, but also around financial literacy and environment and sustainability. In fact, at the office that I'm standing in, if suddenly the lights go dim, it's not because we haven't put another coin in the meter, it's because actually they're set to bear out. If you stand very still, I'm going to move around these just to keep the uh, just to keep the lights going.
Speaker 3:But um, in reality we've got the suite of signature programs that can really expand uh children's understanding of the world, and right at the heart of its tool is positive education. So we're we're probably one of the three leading organizations in the world around positive education and have been for many years, along with Geelong Grammar School in Australia and Kellett School in Hong Kong, and in many respects, what we see now embedded within the curriculum in Dubai is in large part due to the pioneering work that was done with enforced education around this issue long before anybody in this region was doing that, and so we've got a suite of characterizing traits within our schools that actually is something which appeals not only to our parents and our students, but it also appeals to me, to our parents and our students, but it also appeals to me. It's the right kind of mix of technology, of pragmatic skill sets around entrepreneurship and financial literacy and sustainability, and the right kind of human-based approaches around positive education.
Speaker 2:Brilliant and Fortis. What's the vision going forward? Is it looking to expand in the region? The vision going forward?
Speaker 3:Is it looking to expand in the region? Is it looking to expand outside of the region? Yeah, I mean, I think really our vision is that we feel we have a really great product in the education that we offer and that's something that we would like to see moving further afield and, of course, we engage in many conversations as people do. There are lots of opportunities regionally here aren't there? And, of course, beyond the region as well, there are many opportunities. So I think in the not-too-distant future, lisa, I think you'll see that Fortes will be spreading its wings into other parts of the world.
Speaker 2:Okay, brilliant. So when you're not there, trying to take over the world as you do, what are you doing as fun? What are you enjoying?
Speaker 3:uh, it's in terms of work, or just me as a person oh no, just you as a person.
Speaker 2:So okay, when you're not at work.
Speaker 3:Okay, I love my family. Uh, I mean, you know my wife, victoria, very well and, um, I, I, I love my family. Uh, it's great to spend time with them. I have three children, uh, wonderful, wonderful people. Uh, so benjamin, chloe and james, and um, that's really where my focus is. I think I've reached that point in life, in my life, and I've had a very varied and interesting, uh, life we're coming to that.
Speaker 3:We're definitely coming to that. Yes, that's what I was a bit fearful, um, as you know, only too well, and um, and and so I've reached that point in my life when, when I feel really settled, you know, I I'm I'm lucky to, to have a wife that I really love, children that I really love, I'm living in a space that I really love, I'm working for a company that I really love, and and I feel truly blessed and it's not always the case, and it hasn't always been the case in my life, to have that, but to reach this point and have that, there's nothing else that I'm really seeking. You know, I've reached that point.
Speaker 3:I can remember my dad when I was little and it would come close to his birthday and I'd say'd say, daddy, what would you like for your birthday? He would say things like I'd like a metal ruler, because he was, he was keen on woodwork and even at a young age I used to say to him is that all you want for your birthday, daddy? And he would say, yes, I don't want much, neil, he was a very humble man, a great, great inspiration to me, a very humble, uh, gentle man and as well as a gentleman, and um, and I've reached that point. And of course, you don't want to turn into you dad, do you I? I didn't want to go into teaching, uh, because my dad was a teacher. He was a physics teacher. In fact, he was my physics teacher and my form tutor. Can you imagine anything worse? In in nottingham, which was very, a very unforgiving space, and um.
Speaker 3:So I didn't want to become a teacher. Uh, my mum is also a teacher, was also a teacher, and so that was the last thing I wanted to do. And yet, of course, in time, I realized that it somehow it's in my dna. You get a lot of stuff from your parents, don't you? You think you're a unique personality, but of course you're not. And so I found that actually, I was drawn towards teaching in other aspects of my life, and so I found myself eventually becoming a teacher. Now, of course, in time, I've turned into my dad in many ways. I've lost all my hair, and now, when it comes to birthdays, you know I don't want anything. All I want to be is is with my family and enjoying that, and I feel blessed to be in that position.
Speaker 2:So no metal ruler for you, but you've got to have something on your on your list, so I'm helping Victoria out. By the way, guys, I definitely have a lot of admiration for Victoria. She manages to keep Neil in check and organized. Whenever I can't find him, maybe for a speaking engagement or some other thing, I'm like I just. I'm sorry, Victoria, I just got to tap on your door for one more minute. Can I find your husband anywhere? Because you're such a busy gentleman? But here's the thing. You have to want something. So when your little ones are planning your father's day or your birthday, what is?
Speaker 2:the thing that you want apart from being with them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I want time, I want space and I want clear headspace, and in my job and in many of your listeners jobs, that's a very precious commodity, isn't it? To have that clear headspace and and uh, you know, a good night's sleep. I didn't help myself with that with two young children, but you know good night's sleep so that you can think clearly um, that's what I want is is really just the time and space to do it, just time together, to make a memory and to feel as though you know you've captured a moment.
Speaker 2:Do you travel?
Speaker 3:We do travel a little. We used to travel a lot before the littleies came along and now they've reached an age when we feel we probably get better value for money taking them to overseas places that are a bit more cognizant of what they're looking at. So we do travel, we're very keen. We used to live in Shanghai and before that in Singapore. So we like Asia, southeast Asia, we really like Chinese. Victoria and the children speak Chinese and that's an important part of our investment in their future. We think that's important, but also it's a passion of ours. We, um, sometimes you read things in the western press about china, so, um, so we do like travel, and sometimes you, you read in in the western press that, uh, you know a certain perspective on china and, um, we found, we found that those impressions weren't remotely true. We fell in love with Shanghai just a wonderful city, wonderful people. So next year we're going to return for the first time since we left and we're enjoying that. And now, of course, the children speak a little bit of Chinese and so that's very helpful for them. But no, I mean, I think as a family we're keen to engage in a wide range of things. I still engage in my sport, which has been my lifelong love affair, which is karate, and so for many years I started karate when I was 11 because my brother started. Like many children, I sort of looked up to my sibling and he'd done karate, and so I started, and so we still engage in sports and we try to be very active. I've always been very keen on the gym, and so we have a little gym at home that I engage in not as much as I should, and I'm recommitting myself in this term to another period of dedication and devotion to the gym, but, um, so sport is a big part of what we do, and activity, uh, is important, and game playing.
Speaker 3:I think one of the the key drivers in my life is humor. Um, I'm, you know, laughing with people being the clown and and, um, you know, trying to have a bit of word banter is terrifically important to me. For me, it's one of my defining characteristics. I bring it into my job here. When I have meetings with the board of directors, I'm always looking for the laugh, and with my colleagues in our head office, but also with my colleagues in the schools, I think it's important to be kind, for sure and loving. I think that's very important, and sometimes it's difficult for people to understand how to how to best manifest those things in the workplace. But humor is very much easier, and so I think that's something that's really important to bring, and I I try my best, although my family do say to me not another dad joke no, but I listen, I, I had to kind of get.
Speaker 2:I was like is he joking or is he not joking? Because but now I realize, ah, that's the kind of human I like, that kind of dry humor. It's funny, I. But but but initially I wasn't sure. I was like is he being serious? So is he not? I?
Speaker 3:mean, you're not alone in that place. So I my dad, when I, when I grew up, he would often say to me you never know when Neil's being serious. Victoria now says it to me. I can never really tell if you're serious or not. I can still catch her out after all these years. And of course, new friends are like a lamb to the slaughter for my humour. So that's a little bit of that.
Speaker 2:So take me back, neil. I want to go all the way back to your youth. Yeah, Okay. Growing up in Nottingham. What were you up to? And then take me from that point, from your youth, through your maybe tertiary, into your early career, up till this point. Where did it take you Nooks and crannies? Did it take you nooks and crannies?
Speaker 3:it's. There are many nooks and crannies, a bit like my face. Uh, there are many nooks and crannies in that journey. That, lisa it's um.
Speaker 3:So when I was a youth I was very into sports. I was a bright kid. I knew I was bright and um uh, but, but I was very into sports. I loved movement and I was reasonably proficient not at all sports. I was terrible at football and cricket. I was terrified of the cricket ball. But rugby I loved. Athletics I absolutely loved, you know. And so tennis.
Speaker 3:So I competed in a lot of those in my youth, mostly at county level in the UK in my youth, mostly at county level in the UK. So a reasonable level for a young lad. But my passion was karate. That's where I put my efforts. I was a black belt by the time I was 15. I was a third degree black belt by the time I was 21,. One of the youngest in the country at that time, which was back in the very early 80s, would you believe. And so I think if I had to have a defining sort of thread that would have led through that early part of my life, it was very much physical activity, the gym, karate. At one point I was training probably seven hours a day. I'd reached the England squad level, and so that was something that was, um, uh, required in order to to be at that level and compete in in those championships, and, um, and it was something that I was very passionate about.
Speaker 3:I, I'd left school at 16. I uh, my brother was an aero engineer for rolls royce, my dad was my physics teacher and, um, we got close to what at the time we were called O-Levels, now GCSEs, and my dad said to me Neil, what do you want to do when you leave school? What's the plan? And I said calculators have just been invented. I mean, that's how old I am, lisa. And so calculators have just been invented.
Speaker 3:I love the gadgetry and I was one of those kids that wanted to take it apart and see how it worked and see if I could do something different to it. And because my dad was a physics teacher, he encouraged that. And, and in growing up, when I was younger, he and I would have challenge nights when we'd get all the Meccano kit out and we would, uh, they would spend an hour and you had to build a car that could travel the fastest over a meter. Just, you know great quality time with family and that I think that's probably where I get my focus from, um, and so I'd always loved gadgets and I played around with gadgets and microscopes that he would bring in from school, or photographic developing uh kits and so on.
Speaker 3:I said I really want to do something with gadgets and electronics and microelectronics. So he said, well, let me talk to some of the careers advisors that we have at school in Nottingham. Now I don't want to denigrate any of the careers advisors that were at the school in Nottingham in the 70s and 80s. I mean they've probably all passed on now. So it's safe to say he got terrible advice.
Speaker 3:So the careers advisor said to them look, no one's coming out of university with electronics degrees and getting jobs in the 80s. So he would be better off leaving school now and going into an apprenticeship. So I did, I left school, I went into an apprenticeship and my dad then spent the next two years telling me on a weekly basis how brilliantly Russell Easter was, didn't know what his choice was going to be at that point in his life. And he uh, so he, he didn't find a company and many kids where I grew up, um, left school at 16. It was very unusual to go to university. It just wasn't the expectation. It was a very working class area. It wasn't the expectation that you would go to university. So most of the kids with any gumption all left school. I mean, there's the irony, you know how, how important your societal and your local expectations are. Because we all left school, because we were the bright ones, russell God bless him didn't quite know what to do, so he had no choice. You know what a loser. He stayed on at school, did his A-levels, and so my dad, you know, told me how well Russell was doing and how Russell had got a job, got a place at a local university. Life was going to be great for him, and so I very quickly developed a chip on my shoulder, I think, because I knew I was bright. I knew I was one of the brightest kids in my year group and I'd left school. And then maybe there were other kids doing things. Because when I got into industry as a microelectronics engineer, as an apprentice, I discovered that there were loads of kids going to university and they all got jobs in microelectronics. The advice had been categorically wrong. My dad god bless him in all good faith that accepted it and passed it on to me and it was just wrong advice. And so I spent the better part of 10 years in industry until I was in in my mid-20s and in many respects you know, you could look back on it and say, well, that was perhaps wasted time. Across that 10 years I discovered really I wasn't that interested in microelectronics.
Speaker 3:It turned out what I thought as a 16-year-old male it turned out wasn't actually great clarity. Victoria, my wife, says that she thinks that most men mature around about 60 years of age. That's because I'm not far off 60, and I think she's living in hope. But certainly at 16, I definitely didn't know what I wanted to do. I took a best guess on what my interest was and it turned out I discovered that what I really loved was thinking. I loved philosophy, I love literature, I love writing. Those are the things I was into. The arts, it turned out I just didn't know that because I hadn't had that breadth of experience. And I think just to loop the conversation around. So when I look at what we at the absolute scale, amazing scale of what we offer at Fortis Education Schools, st Mark and Regents International, it's what I would have liked to have had the opportunity to taste. I might not have become an expert in any of those things, but I would have known that they existed, whereas in my very working class home in Nottingham you just didn't get exposed to that range of opportunities or concepts of what you could do with your life. So I discovered over the 10 years that actually I wasn't that interested in microelectronics. I was reasonable at it, I wasn't terrible. I became a computer programmer, a C++ programmer, but actually you know it wasn't my thing. And so around about 25, I decided to go to university. Now, looking back, were those 10 years wasted? Well, it turns out not, because actually 10 years in industry taught me a great deal.
Speaker 3:I can remember, in the first year of my apprenticeship, being sat behind a lady called Doris and her job it was it was sort of prior to automation of microelectronics factories, and so our job was to assemble telephones basically, and a part of that. We had to make sure that all the resistors, all the little electronic components, had their legs bent and cut to the right length, and there wasn't automation for it, so largely it was done by humans. And I sat behind doris, who had been who'd been the lead um, resistor, leg bender and cutter um for the last seven years, and so I had six weeks sat behind doris and lisa. Honestly, I can still remember it now I talk to students about it because I'm a dinosaur and um and I explain how important it is to be motivated because I sat behind Doris and we started work at 7am and a klaxon sounded. We start work and you would take a resistor from one bucket and you put it on a little jig in front of you and there's a foot pedal that you press which pulled the resistor down, so it bent the legs up and when you release the button it cut the legs off and the resistor fell to a bucket that was between your feet. And then you picked up the next one and did it. Now I, I confess, for the first 10. It was really interesting, oh, this is good, and just getting the rhythm syncopated. And you know, I looked up and oh, look, it's one minute past seven. There we go. And you carried on until 12 27, because if you'd carried on until 12.30, you would have qualified for a longer break. So your morning session was from 7 o'clock till 12.27 and you had a 10-minute break, again signalled by Klaxon, and then after you came back, after your lunch, which was 30 minutes, so you came back at 12.57, you'd restart work and then you'd work until 4.30. And all I was doing was that After day one, I thought I was going to go mad, I mean really mad.
Speaker 3:And so I was 16. And I sat behind Doris, who was a very lovely and kind lady, helping me understand how it works. But I was thinking I can't become you Doris. And she seemed to be very happy with the role and fair play to her. But I knew that it wasn't going to be for me. And so, because of that, from 16 onwards, I started to think and I knew that that wasn't going to be my job. I knew I was actually going to end up being office bound and programming computers and so on, but I thought't this isn't the kind of industry I want to be involved in, it's not something which is filling me. And and of course my mind wandered and and strayed into philosophy and literature and so on, and I discovered a real passion, because I'm an imaginative creator. I suppose really I'm a creative. That's that's how I feel when I create documents and and presentations and so on. I love putting it all together. That gives me a great deal of pleasure. But I didn't know that at 16, but I discovered it as I grew towards my 20s. So by the time I got to 25, I said, okay, you know, then I'm not going to do this, I'm going to go to university Now.
Speaker 3:Coincidentally, because I know that you want to prove into this coincidentally, around about that time I bought my own house, my first. I got a mortgage for my first house, and a few doors down from me was there was a great couple. The guy was very charismatic, the lady was very kind and I really sort of hit it off with them. I thought, oh yeah, there's, you know, you're great people. I'd like to spend more time with you. It turned out that he was a trainee vicar, uh. So uh, and there was a church just on the other side of the road. I didn't know there's a church on the other side of the road and anyway, I got to be good friends with him and he was a great squash player. We'd play a lot of squash and before I knew it I was going to the church and before I knew it I'd become a Christian.
Speaker 3:And uh, and so I decided, in this sort of latter 20 year, 20 years plus period of my life, I decided that what I wanted to do in life was I too wanted to become a vicar. I, I wanted to. You know, I was going to leave my computer programming job, I was going to become a vicar. And so that, to you know, I was going to leave my computer programming job, I was going to become a vicar. And so that's when I left and went to university. That's what I went to do.
Speaker 3:I went to do a theology degree at Nossium. I absolutely loved it. It was really great because of course, it was full of philosophy and it was full of literature of a particular type, but it was full of it, was full of literature, and so I absolutely loved it and I was ordained. You know, I somewhere I have the little plastic collar in a memories box somewhere and was a curate in Bristol, whilst I thought that the church was going to be a good fit for me. Actually it wasn't a good fit for me, I wasn't a good fit for it.
Speaker 3:And so I left and went into teaching, and so by that time I was probably in my late 20s and, uh, I'd reached the point when, um, I understood that, uh, actually I was going to become my parents and throughout my karate career which by then was sort of 15 years old and had reached the very highest level, a lot of what I was had reached the very highest level. A lot of what I was doing was teaching. Similarly, with tennis, a lot of what I was doing was teaching. And in the end I realized I'm a teacher and you know I'm manifesting my teaching in other aspects of my life, but actually I haven't understood that actually I'm a teacher. And so then, in my late 20s, I trained to be a teacher.
Speaker 2:What did you teach?
Speaker 3:I was primary. I always wanted to teach primary, partly because I'm still a child and I'm still very in touch with the four-year-old within, and so it was always my great joy to be a child. You know, I used to do mad things. We would have dressing up. I always felt there were not enough dressing up days in school. You could make algebra a lot more interesting if you were just dressed as Homer Simpson, and so we would have periodic. I would think of festivals, so we would have firework hat day or just cartoon character day. There was one particular day I dressed up as as homer simpson painted myself yellow. All the children were also dressed as their favorite characters and I had two tennis balls that I that I put. As you know how homer's eyes sort of bulge out of his head, I had these two tennis balls that I cut these tiny holes in and put them on my eyes with the holes in different spaces. Within about half an hour I had the worst headache I've ever had in my life. I hadn't realized it would have such an impact and um, so just having those kind of uh experiences with young people and and seeing how you can get fantastically, I was passionate about.
Speaker 3:I trained as a maths teacher within primary and you could get fantastically complicated maths out of these little children's minds if you just made it fun. There was a game that used to be around in the UK where the host would. The contestants would say to the host can I have a pee, please, bob? And it was this particular game where you had to sort of build a map across a particular board to get from one side to the other. And they had these electronic buzzers. And so I used my electronic background to build this special using some simple chips, and I did it with the children so they too could see what we were doing. So we built this unit which for them was super complicated microelectronics. They were year five children. We built this unit which for them was super complicated microelectronics. They were year five children. And we built it so that you could have eight different buttons so that eight children could play simultaneously, or 16 children could play if they're in a pair. Hit the button to get the first answer to answer math questions. So we would have weekly math competitions in this way and the children would be super motivated In the end.
Speaker 3:I had a whole class of year five children that could cube 17 in their heads. Why, you know? Just because we had played with numbers and loved numbers and I brought this ridiculous passion of numbers to it. I can remember with this same class that I decided across the whole school I was going to run a whole math week. Everybody dropped the curriculum. This is in the days when you could really do fun stuff, lisa, lisa and we dropped the whole curriculum across the whole school and I created activities for all classes, for all the teachers to do, and it was crime scenes and all sorts of fabulous stuff that we were doing.
Speaker 3:Anyway, in my class we wanted to build this massive head that was going to because it was Think of a Number Johnny Ball's show, if you remember that from the UK days, think of a number. So we wanted to build this massive head out of chicken wire and papier-mâché and put it in the main hall wall and it was going to be about four metres high and then the numbers would all come cascading out the top. And so we built it in my class and I hadn't realised because I was I think this was my second year of teaching I hadn't realised that papier-mâché would be actually quite heavy and of teaching I hadn't realized that papier-mâché would be actually quite heavy and also it would drip a lot of glue everywhere. It filled the whole of my classroom and children had to take turns lying underneath it and just holding up the chicken wire so that it didn't all come out. And of course we just and then, once we finished building, we couldn't get it out the door we had to disassemble it and then reassemble it in the hall. It was just a fabulous time, you know, just a fabulous time, and they, the children, made it fabulous for me and I tried my very best to make it fabulous for them and we could do wonderful things.
Speaker 3:I was always passionate about music. My, my mother was, um, a trained singer, a very, very good singer. Her, her examination was with Andrew Lloyd Webber's father, and so I'd grown up singing the Messiah while sort of sat at my mother's knee. I always loved music, not that I have a particularly good voice, but I definitely sang with gusto, the most enthusiastic singer, if not the most skillful. And so, you know, I'd bring my guitar because old vicar habits, you know, die hard. I, I bring my guitar because old, old vicar habits, you know, die hard. I bring my guitar into the into the classroom and we just sing songs and you know we'd sing beautiful four-part, four-part harmony songs for the children and I felt, you know, back then in the sort of mid-90s, um, early mid-90s, it was just a wonderful time. So if you're a creative, imaginative teacher, to come and bring that into the classroom. So my passion was always with primary age children. I always found that a real playground to play with concepts and and get big ideas across in entertaining ways.
Speaker 2:I can just imagine how much fun you were as a primary teacher, because you know primary is the now. Now it's a bit more serious and they're trying to hit targets and all this business. But it can you imagine just kind of dreaming up things and just going in there and experimenting with the kids.
Speaker 3:Oh my god, that was a bit fun so it was fun, it was a lot of fun and you know it was fun. It was fun in the traditional sort of teaching ways and it was fun, you know, just just to have fun and and understanding that the connection you make as a teacher with your students is critically important to them. You know, if I said to you right now, lisa, can you remember, can you name one teacher that stands out in your mind through through your time? You would be able to name that teacher. Yeah, I know I can name him. My gentleman is Ken Orchard.
Speaker 3:I'd lost my hymn book when I was at school. We used to have hymn books back in the day, before any overhead projectors, and so you'd have a book of songs that you would sing in assembly times and I'd lost mine. And the year six teacher was bashing one of the kids in the row in front of me around the back of the head because his hymn book was in a tatty state. He was bashing him with this book. This was back in the 70s, you know, when that kind of thing did happen and I was terrified. I couldn't sleep at night, worried about this guy, sid Pie Finch. I can still remember bashing this kid and so I was reading one day at the desk of of my teacher, mr orchard, ken orchard and I suddenly broke down in tears, which was very unlike me, a very happy, happy girl, lucky kind of person and he said what was the matter, neil? And uh, I said, and he said I can solve that for you. I just walked over to the cupboard and got a new one. Now we've been trying in my family for months to find where they got these books from and replace one and so on, and of course you know the beautiful sting of the tail was. You know, you can guarantee.
Speaker 3:Of course I went into Sid Pyefinch's class. There were two choices there was him or one other teacher and I got put into his class and he was universally unpopular. Bless him, this particular teacher teacher. And every year when kids left the school we were taught in these wooden huts and every year as his class left, they burnt down just his half of the hut. The other year season the other half. I mean, you know obviously it was vandalism and a crime, but also very clever just to be able to burn one half of the. Every year they had to rebuild.
Speaker 3:I went into Sid's five inches class and true enough, first day he said right, everybody get out your hymn books. And we all had to get our hymn books out, put them on the desk in front of us and he went around the class saying this is terrible, that's in an awful state, until he got to mine. Well, of course, mine was only about six weeks old, because Ken Orchard had given me this book just before and he held it up and said look at Hopkins book, look at Hopkins book, it looks almost brand new. All of you should have looked after yours like this. Well, it was brand new. So you know, in the end the joke was on him because I kept very quiet. But I have forevermore.
Speaker 3:I've remembered Ken Orchard. And you know why have I remembered him? Because he was kind. It was the kindness that he showed and I would. I was, I used to love drawing and so I paint these and I love. I had bird books and so I open up a bird book and then I sellotape all the bits of paper together and I paint a life size golden eagle and I felt, tip all the colors and then I fold it all up and bring it into school. He would put it on display and say oh, let's have a look at one of Neil's amazing drawings again. It will be on the wall and those things they stay with you, don't they?
Speaker 3:The beauty of it is that when I was in Shanghai, I was being interviewed by some magazine and they said you know who are the most important educators in your life? And I mentioned ken orchard, and it got published in this, this chinese magazine. I sent a copy to my mum, of course, as you do send a copy to my mum and she, um, she had a little walk into the town and she took it to ken orchard, who was still alive in his 90s and still alive, and said you know, I don't know whether you remember, uh, neil, but you know, here's this thing Dr Neil Hopkins is now principal in Shanghai and he happened to have said I do remember him, I do remember him, I always thought he would be a leader. I always thought that I had a wonderful conversation you know, about me and about times and how things had changed, and just, you know, just a wonderful moment. So I had a small opportunity to show my gratitude to this gentleman who had shown me how you could be a primary teacher If you take interest in the kids and if you affirm them and lift them up, they'll produce magic.
Speaker 3:So when I got into class I wanted to do that, but of course I wanted to add a little bit of naughtiness in.
Speaker 3:So April Fool's Day would come along and I created April Fool's Day letters for every teacher in the school and they all got delivered.
Speaker 3:And I had my kids in on the joke.
Speaker 3:You know I've written this one for Mrs So-and-so because of blah blah blah.
Speaker 3:I told them all the story and every child kept the secret for 30 days until we got to April Fool's Day and then all the teachers had opened their letters before they came into the assembly and they were talking to each other about this terrible thing that the lecturer had said we're going to fine you, or we're going to do this, or we're going to come and blah blah blah that.
Speaker 3:And then, you know, at the end of the assembly I had my class stand up and then shout April Fool's to all the teachers, those kinds of those kind of things in in my mind that actually, although you know it takes a little time and maybe it's not direct education, but if you do that you have these children in the palm of your hand and then, with integrity, you can lead them into fantastic mathematical concepts or really difficult literature that they're going to engage with, or tough technology that they're going to learn, because they'll do that for you, and that's, that's the responsibility that's on us, isn't it, as as teachers, to to nurture these young people and to inspire them to love learning and to love the learning environment? Yeah, and, and that that's what I tried to do when I was in class brilliant.
Speaker 2:I loved that. You are an excellent storyteller. I could just sit here and listen to stories all day, because I love stories. I believe that you know, stories bring life to life, so how did? You transition from primary teacher to school leader and then principal.
Speaker 3:Well, I was super lucky. So in my first headship uh, which was uh in in a little, a little village actually in Cheshire in the UK called Presbury, there's more champagne drunk per square foot in Presbury than anywhere else in the country. Here's where all the footballers live.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's where all the footballers live. And that was my first headship, a great little school. And while I was there, somebody came to visit me, a guy called Richard Hunter, who at the time was working for an organization that you will remember, lisa, but maybe not everybody called the Specialist School and Academies Trust, and the SSAT was an alternative to the DfE in the UK, basically. So the DfE was the government's arm and the ssat was a by schools for schools organization that had government funding and it did a huge amount of great work. Um, it still exists, the ssat it's. It's worth going to their site. They still do great things. It's not the same entity that it was. It's now a limited company, a different thing, but at the time, um, it was a charitable organization that did brilliant things.
Speaker 3:Kai vasher, uh, used to be, uh, one of their uh associate directors, I think at one point. Yeah, anyway, this chap, richard hunter, um, came to see me. He was head of the primary wing and he said uh, you know, we've heard about all the wonderful things you're doing with technology. Uh, in the school, I'm sure he hadn't. I have no idea to this day quite what was behind that statement, but we were doing some interesting things around technology and he said so I want to invite you to join our primary head teacher steering group at the SSAT. Now I understood the SSAT as a secondary based organization because every secondary school in the country was affiliated with it. Not so many primary schools about um, in the end it was about a thousand primary schools were affiliated, but but every secondary school was. And I said, oh, I didn't know there was a primary wing. He said, yes, there is, and we want innovators and entrepreneurs to come and join it. Will you come and join it? So? So I said yes, I'd love to thank you very much, and I can remember now the first meeting.
Speaker 3:I walked into the room and around this table was sat probably about 10 people who were all the great and the good of British primary education. I mean amazing people, and they're all 20 years older than me. They're all in their mid to late 50s. You know, I was in my early 30s and I thought, gosh, I don't belong in this room, I have nothing to contribute. And I thought, gosh, I don't belong in this room, I have nothing to contribute. And many of the so-called innovative things I were doing were copied from their schools. Why am I here? And anyway, they looked at me, this poor, trembling little 30-year-old, and they just took me under their wing. And Neil, we're just going to show you how this works.
Speaker 3:And over the course of the next 10 years I had the most privileged mentoring that anybody could ever have had anywhere. It just catapulted my vision for what primary education could be like From somebody who was keen and had his own slightly mad, idiosyncratic ideas. From the primary classroom it catapulted me into the realm of, you know, being a consummate professional, a visionary, an innovator, altruistic, all of those things I mean, just amazing. And it all came through working with this SSAT group and I became chair of that particular group and then eventually I became a director at the SSAT and what that meant was that every six weeks or so we would be meeting the Secretary of State for Education or a Minister of Education or someone from the House of Lords. So I then became very involved in all the political side of trying to influence education and move that in what I felt was the right direction. So I think in many respects that sort of sparked my appetite for the whole education system.
Speaker 3:I became an executive head in London with schools and with the Sure Start centres underneath the cluster of these establishments that I was running, if you remember those brilliant institutions that sadly have gone now. But, um, you know. So I had, I had an opportunity then to be working from children who were, who had just been born in the sure start and not they weren't born in the sure start centers, thankfully, I had just been born in the realist sure start centers all the way uh, through. And then, of course, I had all this involvement with the secondary schools, with the ssat. So I I'd reached the point when I needed to do the next thing, and the thing is I'm restless. I'm naturally a restless person. I've got a lot of I was going to say a lot of energy. I haven't, I'm mostly exhausted at night, but I've got a lot of intellectual energy and ambition to what I'm hungry and restless in the pursuit of excellence type of person. And so I needed something more.
Speaker 3:I we were running great schools and and great children's centres, you know, really outstanding spaces and, knocking out the part, I had great colleagues, we're doing some radical things. I can remember we had one special inspection around technology coming to the school and when we got the call from the HMI, I said we are going to blow your socks off, and he said. When he arrived on the first day, he said well, I'm looking forward to this because you've really set yourself up for a fall here. You know, I've never had anybody speak to me like that. Uh, when they came in inspection he came back to me at the lunchtime after the first day. He said not only have I not got any socks on, I need to go lie down in a dark room. I can't believe what you're doing with technology. And so you know.
Speaker 3:I felt as though I'd reached a point when what am I going to do now? And for me it had to be going to an all-through school. I wanted to go from the very youngest of children, little babies, all the way through to children up to university, or maybe even beyond into university. Because I'd spent I'd spent 10 years lecturing at Manchester University while I was ahead in, not only in Manchester, but later, when I was in Birmingham and then in London, I was still lecturing at Manchester University. I was an examiner at Warwick and at Plymouth Universities for the master's courses. I was I was very into higher education. As soon as I finished my PGCE, I started a master's degree. In the first year of my teaching Everyone said what an idiot you know you're never going to manage it. But it was fine. And as soon as I finished my master's degree I started my PhD. I was just hungry and driven like that to do that, and so I wanted to sort of stretch across the whole bandwidth of education.
Speaker 3:And I was going on holiday to Australia and stopped off in Singapore and I thought, oh, this is nice, this seems like a very nice place. And my son Benjamin yeah, I really like it. And, as luck would have it, by the time I landed in Australia, a message pinged into my emails from the guy who'd appointed me as the executive head in London and he said you know, I think you might be interested in this role, neil, and I said, oh well, it was at a North Anglia education school. And I said well, it's only a two-week time, it must be a, you know, sewn-up job. He said, no, I don't think it is. But you know, I think, I think, I think it might be the right fit for you. So I applied. I had to, I was on holidays, I had to buy a formal shirt and a tie. I was interviewed like this I had no trousers on, just little shorts and flip-flops. Actually, I'm dressed like that now, lisa.
Speaker 2:Step back from the camera.
Speaker 3:Neil, exactly, yeah, we'll leave that for after. You stop recording. And so, you know, I did this interview on camera with the head of HR. They stopped me off in Dubai on the way back to Pullman. I had a formal interview with the MD and spoke to the CEO on the phone. By the time I landed in the UK they'd offered the job.
Speaker 3:And so I went to Singapore, to this brilliant, all-through school that was, you know, probably 50 years behind the time and North Anglia had just acquired it and it needed to be, you know, suddenly brought up to speed. And that was my job and within a year we tripled in size. I mean just a raging success. I had amazing, uh senior leadership team that really took it uh, places and just a fabulous time. And on the basis of that, I then moved to Shanghai, to North Anglia's flagship school.
Speaker 3:So I think in many respects, um, I was just, it was about it's one of those sorts of moments, isn't it, when the stars have to align um, I'd had certain experiences, I knew the recruiter, the whole thing just fell into place and it was just the right school for me to make that initial transition in. Probably just the right country. You know, singapore is easy to deal with as a Brit, before moving to China and then, of course, now coming to Dubai, so just a wonderful experience, and again, I feel very lucky to have had that opportunity. Oh, brilliant. To China and then, of course, now coming to Dubai. So, um, just a wonderful experience, and again I, you know, I feel very lucky to have had that opportunity oh, brilliant, I I could.
Speaker 2:I could just sit here and listen, listen. I can't have you on the podcast without talking tech and talking AI. So gather yourself, neil, because we're guys, people who are listening. I, neil, keynoted the Middle East School Leadership Conference this year, 2024. And I sat there. I was excited. I was scared At points, I was a bit petrified. Of course, I was entertained because Neil is an excellent storyteller, as you can tell by sitting here for nearly an hour already listening to this podcast. But his take on AI is refreshing because it actually is hopeful, and so I just wanted to ask Neil, why should teachers really embrace AI now?
Speaker 3:I think it's really essentially so. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to say this. I'm a sort of an ai evangelist. Uh, really, um, and not because I have any particular skill. I don't really, uh, an ai. I'm an ai evangelist because, uh, I can see where education is going and how essential it's going to be for teachers to get on board.
Speaker 3:Many, many teachers are just afraid of it. It's difficult, it's new, it's complicated. That's a good reason for us all to try and put it off as long as we can, but there's no stopping it. It's a juggernaut. It's coming. So that strategy won't work. Other teachers are fearful of it because they think it's going to take their job. And it's not going to. It will take your job if you're the kind of teacher who's sage on the stage, chalk and talk. If you think that there's a power gradient between you as the teacher and the student down there, and the job here is to unzip the student's head, pour in all the knowledge that's in your head, snap it shut and say to them try and keep hold of all of that and regurgitate it in the exam. If that's how you understand education and teaching to be, then ai is definitely going to come and eat your breakfast because it can do it better than you and, as things are moving exponentially rapidly, it's definitely going to be able to do it better than you within a year, max two years. So I think for those people, if you're set in that mindset where you're very didactic, then we're not going to need you and in many respects that's a brilliant thing, because if you go to countries around the world where it's difficult to get access to a teacher it's difficult to get access to a teacher who speaks your language or is difficult to get access to a teacher who has particular expertise and skill set in that then actually AI's ability to close down that gap at very little cost, with the exception of the Internet connection and the device to run it on, of the internet connection and the device to run it on. Actually that will be a game changer globally for brilliantly skillful children who don't know they are because they haven't learned and they haven't been educated. And I think you know that's a great thing that AI will bring. But if you're a teacher in a more established country where you're still didactic, then that's going to go.
Speaker 3:However, I think the problem is around teaching, because the word itself lends itself to that power gradient and it lends itself to thinking. This is what the game is. If I ruled the world and thank goodness I don't, if I ruled the world we wouldn't have teachers, we'd have leaders of learning, and people would understand that their role is to lead learning for the children and for themselves, of course. And so if you understand yourself as a leader of learning, then actually the role that AI plays is something that is enabling because it's a tool. It's just like the iPad is a tool. It's just like the calculator was just a tool, is a tool. It's just like the calculator. Uh, it was just a tool.
Speaker 3:Nowadays, we wouldn't expect children to, um, kind of get out their slide rule and get out the logarithmic tables and all that stuff. Why would you do that when you've got a tool that can do that? Uh, you know, we can remember and we've all seen the the reclippings of the adverts of teachers protesting against the introduction of calculators in the 80s, and you know it just doesn't make any sense. You can see it's ridiculous. Well, the same thing is going to be true of AI. It will be ridiculous not to be equipping the children in order to know how to leverage it. But that's the key. So the teacher, the leader of learning, is the person that should be helping the children understand how to leverage AI, how to sew the bits of AI together, how to understand what AI can do and what it can't do, what AI might do and what you don't want it to do. That's going to be the role of the teacher to be a real facilitator.
Speaker 3:For me, the core message is and we've seen Dylan William and John Hattie. They presented a paper just a few months ago saying look the way this is all going and we can't stop it, folks. But the way this is all going and we can't stop it, folks, but the way this is all going, we think that actually society is going to become decoupled from education and ultimately our children are going to be de-educated. We as people aren't going to know what to do. Now I'm not that pessimistic. I think if as educators and if as an educational community, we can all understand that our job is shifting much more to facilitator and we've talked about teachers as facilitators for years now, decades at least, but now, seriously, it's upon us because there's an alternative way of the children learning through AI but if we can understand that the teacher is then actually the facilitator, then that gives a whole new perspective on what your role is.
Speaker 3:You don't have to be the knowledge bearer. You don't have to be the font of all knowledge, because that's existing somewhere else. What you have to be is someone that helps discernment and someone that helps higher order, metacognitive analysis of what's going on. Now there's something underpinning here. Victoria talks about this very often around our community in Dubai. Talks about the pyramid that's above that, that exists around compassion and empathy and how our job as teachers is to make sure that that is retained within students.
Speaker 3:But then they're not frustrated that they can't get to actually offer solutions to problems they find because I'm not able to build the thing, I'm not able to code this thing. Ai can do that. So if we as teachers can facilitate your knowledge as a child, then actually you can code. You don't even need to know how to code, but you can code because we've now got a tool that will help you. You can construct because actually you can do CAD-CAM and you can build it in 3D and you can build a solution. You can actually solve that problem you've identified in that other space for that other human, maybe in another country.
Speaker 3:Now, actually, I think we're at the dawn of the most exciting era of a radical transformation of what teaching could be, and it is liberating in many ways because you don't have to be the font of all knowledge, but you do have to acquire a new skill set, and that skill set is radical in the sense of its full-on facilitation and support of children's metacognitive thinking. That that, for me, is where the juice is going to be in the future. It's going to be facilitation and a real understanding on teachers about how you support metacognition, and for me, the key is design thinking. That's, that's how it all sits together within, maybe, a STEAM construct, but actually, in any subject, within a design thinking construct around metacognition.
Speaker 2:And I agree with you. I'm a convert, like of course I love tech, but I'm a definite convert on the role that AI will play and how teachers' roles will have to transform to meet those needs. But I'm also very cognizant of the fact that the mass of teachers do not yet have their heads around this and I'm also very much curious as to where the school begins to help teachers to get to that place. Where do they start?
Speaker 3:Well, it all starts with failure, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:We know this. You know your first attempt in learning fail. You know that's where it is. We have to create a climate. This is what we've done at Fortis Education. We have an AI task force and our teachers have been working non-stop for the last year just on AI, focusing on little things they can do. Now are they moving the needle? Are they going to change the world? No, of course not. These little things they're doing. Maybe they're little bots that might be supporting the IB curriculum in some way. Maybe it's a revision tool for GCSE, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe it's a planning tool. Maybe it's a way of assessing children's work and feeding back in a in a better way. Um, so, they're not moving the needle massively, but the crucial thing that it's doing is it's making sure that every teacher is playing, every teacher is having a go, and that we're sharing our successes and our failures and we're laughing about it and we're enjoying it and we're celebrating it, just so that we can say, yeah, ai is not so scary, or even if it still is scary for you, I can borrow your energy because, lisa, you've you've made this little thing. I don't really know how you made it, but I'm going to try to use it because you're my friend, uh, and you'll support me if I can't figure out how to do it quietly and no one else will know that I'm a bit of a Luddite. And before you know it, you're hooked and you say that is good. How did you make that, at least? And you say it's super simple. Let me just show you. And before you know it, that person has also become an adopter from you as an early adopter. So I think, as with we've seen this and I've certainly seen of my career that actually that sort of early, all the whack balls come on in the first adoption. As soon as it arrives, all the lunatics are jumping on it and posting on linkedin and, and you know, whatever other platform they use. Uh, you know, be cautious about those people because they're all bonkers.
Speaker 3:However, um, that next, you know that's the initial two percent. You know that next important percentage um is, you know, around about 14 or so is critically important because they're all of those super early adopters that are sensible but actually are keen and open minded and they will carry the rest of that envelope. Of course there's going to be 2% at the other end that never want to know. We know that, but that's OK, because AI is going to come and eat their lunch and they won't. They won't remain there, um, but everybody else will be within that envelope and it's okay for that to take a bit of time and it's okay for it to cascade.
Speaker 3:But it starts with that critical 14. You know the few whack balls at the front that are mad, keen on it and can't talk about anything else that you're trying to avoid at dinner parties. You know those kind of people, the next little set of the critical ones, and that's where the school should put its focus on to make sure that you capture those people and you've made it okay to fail and understand that. That's simply a step. And actually, if you embrace design thinking, it's not only a step, it's part of the process, it's part of prototyping and evaluating and then iterating and going again. So if you have that culture and that approach to it, then suddenly you liberate people from a sense of feeling silly or feeling judged or feeling under pressure to get there Now.
Speaker 3:Eventually the tech will catch up and we'll see the market forces, which is so huge, will start pushing out all sorts of AI solutions to schools that have good safeguarding and are well thought through in terms of their AI ethics, all of which is terrifically important. But while that's happening, in order to get your workforce ready for it, this playing around the edges of that and gathering a momentum and starting to see how you can improve the parents' experience, how you can improve the students' experience, how you can improve the staff experience that's going to be critically important for those schools that manage it and for those schools that don't, I think we will see a movement of students away from them towards those that do brilliant, and what are you using, so like, what's your favorite tool currently?
Speaker 3:ai tool well, you know, to be honest, in my particular role, I'm all I'm missing. You know this is obviously very boring. I'm all around chat GPT. I'm not one of these people that engages in a whole range of things, and many of my colleagues do, largely the colleagues that are closer to where the children are and where the actual teaching, you know, is. In my role, a lot of what I'm doing is creating text, creating thoughts and words, and so I tend to use the text-based stuff and, to be fair, I'm not entirely won over yet. I spend a lot of time. I become, you know, victoria tells me I've become an angry old man, and so, you know, I'm typing at the computer and chat GPT doesn't do exactly what I've told it to do, and I'm shouting at it saying I thought you were supposed to be the most intelligent thing. You know you're not doing this. I'm typing away, shouting at it. She says there's not a human and be kind anyway, nil um. But so I think there's still a way to go for um, for creative narrative creation and ai. I don't. I don't see that as being supplanted by ai yet um, because I don't see a refinement yet appearing that I'm sure it will come, I'm sure it will come. So when I use AI it tends to be around sort of text based or maybe some sort of image based thing, you know. So mid journey et cetera, those kind of things I dabble in, but really just to try and keep my hand in. So I've got some sense of where AI is. I think, especially when you get to my ancient age, lisa, you you know you can't let these new things sort of get paced.
Speaker 3:I can remember just go back to my dad. I can remember when we got a video cassette recorder and, uh, he was always trying to program it to watch neighbors or something on the tv and and he could never get the time right so it never recorded it for him. He always recorded coronation and he was always terribly upset. I've now turned into that. I now can't operate. You, my kids now have to say well, netflix doesn't work like that, dad, or Disney Channel or whatever it is. I can't make the thing work and find the stuff. So inevitably technology does that and I think as teachers we need to recognize we don't have to be ahead of it.
Speaker 3:At one point in my career I led Robin Hood Primary School in Birmingham, which was the country's leading school for technology Robin Hood Primary School in Birmingham, which was the country's leading school for technology. Tony Blair visited us. Everybody was visiting to look at it. We would have 50 teachers from around the country visiting every week to come and look at what we were doing in this very, very working class part of Birmingham. I stayed close to my working class roots for most of my career I'm not sure I can still claim it in Dubai, but for most of my UK career at least I was and the head teachers would come and say you know, how are you doing all this innovative stuff with the technology?
Speaker 3:And we would say look, stuff is passed to us on on, you know, cds. In that time we hand it to the kids and we say to them tell us what this is all about, tell us how we might use it within the school, how we might embed it within the curriculum. And and they do that thinking for us. If, if we can empower the children, we can liberate ourselves from thinking that we have to be the experts. We don't. These wonderful young minds are able to really tease through how this stuff works. Our job is to help them metacognitively analyze how they're going to make use of that.
Speaker 2:Brilliant. Wow, that is a fabulous place to end the pod. Should I call you Dr Neil, father, neil, neil, I don't know which one to call you now but I just want to say thank you.
Speaker 3:I'm mostly happy if people aren't just calling me a rude name. You know that's a success in my life. You can call me you like no, it's been my pleasure to talk with you. It's been my pleasure to talk.
Speaker 2:I've really enjoyed our chat. I really, I really hope people have stayed till the very end. If you have, wherever you're listening to this, leave us a comment, get in touch with Dr Neal he is on LinkedIn and also check out Fortis Education, and maybe you'll see him at an event somewhere delivering one of his running keynotes where the cameramen are chasing him. But whatever it is, we are really grateful for your time, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you, lisa, and thank you for everything that you're doing to open up the world of Dubai and beyond to all of the educators here. You're building a great community and we're all grateful for that.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Teach Middle East podcast. Visit our website teachmiddleeastcom and follow us on social media. The links are in the show notes.