NZ Business Podcast - Paul Spain
01:01:41 · Paul Spain, Jamie Beaton
[01:01:41] S1: Yeah. Look. I I think it's fascinating and, you know, I've always liked to see how people are applying technology to make things, you know, better and and do things in a smarter way than, you know, have been in the past. But, yeah, I look back to my own childhood. There was a a window of time where my family decided, hey. We... We're gonna travel. We're gonna spend a bit of time, you know, in our case, going back to The UK Yeah. Where my parents and and my brothers were born, and visit some other places along the way. And they weren't so keen on it being a short school holiday time trip. This was something we were gonna be doing over over a period of of months. And so, yep, at that stage, a correspondence school was something you could you could tap into. [01:02:21] S0: Yep.
01:02:21 · Paul Spain
[01:02:21] S1: You know, I personally really enjoyed the experience, but there was an aspect of of accelerated learning even with us being sort of sent these booklets and bits and pieces where once you stripped away the other 20 odd people within the classroom and it was actually, you know, just you, you know, working on the things and a parent there to provide input and so on, but, you know, really, really good resources. You know, I think we got through our school day kind of in the morning. Right? So by lunchtime, you had the rest of the day That's lot of sense. Available. And, yeah, no. Look. I'm, you know, I'm I'm at a... Yeah. Probably more middle of the road, not someone that was, you know, expecting to head off to Oxford or anything. But, you know, if that applied to me in that context, yeah, I can certainly understand the value of of what you were doing. In fact, you know, I remember a a discussion with... In one of the TV radio newsrooms in New Zealand when it was disclosed that, you know, the prior government was looking at a change to the education system that would allow people to do online Yeah. Learning. I was chatting to someone that was sort of throwing their hands in the air and saying how ridiculous it was and, you know, thinking, well, there are technological resources that actually, you know, can be very helpful and Totally. Get that mix right even better. So I think it's a, you know, it's a great concept. I'm sure that there are lots of challenges to take that from, you know, where you got two markets where where it kind of operates on the... Maybe a a similar level to attending a a local high school. Is that kind of where you're at at the moment with New Zealand and the and The US? You you have to go through a certification process. What does that actually look like to be able to tick that box and and for the state to say, hey. Yeah. You can go to that school and not turn up to a a normal local high school.
01:04:09 · Jamie Beaton, Paul Spain
[01:04:09] S0: So because we're accredited in both New Zealand and The US and we have an international license, we can actually take kids in any geography, which is why today in our classes, we've got kids from more than 20 countries. So today, we've got learners from Costa Rica, from Russia, from, you know, Japan, from China, from New Zealand in the classes. So now we're fully accredited. That was a, you know, massive ordeal. But, you know, we got through that, and, you know, now now it's really exciting. [01:04:32] S1: So you don't you don't need to do other markets? Like, somebody in Singapore [01:04:35] S0: We've Singapore [01:04:36] S1: kids. Wants to Yeah. [01:04:37] S0: We've got 10 can [01:04:38] S1: they do it full time, or does it have to sit alongside a lot
01:04:40 · Jamie Beaton
[01:04:40] S0: of education? Usually, they can do it full time. Sometimes they have to do it part time, but in most geographies, full time is fine because the qualification that we're teaching is a levels, which basically is the most popular qualification in the world. You know, schools like Westlake used to do it, King's College, you know, Auckland Grammar. John Morris actually brought a levels to New Zealand, our executive headmaster. So this is kind of the next evolution for him. So, basically, a levels are recognized by all the major universities. I used a levels to get into, you know, most of the top schools in the world. So that is, you know, kind of a world class qualification. It really sits above many of these national qualifications. And then the American Curriculum AP is also really exciting. We're the first school in New Zealand to, you know, even offer the AP, which is really cool. Previously, you could never tap into that here in a big way. So at this stage, you know, we're we're fully good to go. How this looks like is you go... You hop into a live class with typically six to 12 students. You're speaking a lot more in that class than a physical classroom because you're having to screen share, debate, engage. That's part of your grade. The teacher's holding you accountable. And so a lot of our families are telling us that the kids are actually growing a lot faster, not only from an academic standpoint, but from a social confidence, in in argumentation, debate, content, you know, engagement perspective as well. You can annotate, you know, work with multiple kids on a math problem on screen together, and then also watch recordings and have mom and dad learn from those statistics of how the child's participating. So that's happening right now, and, you know, it's already really exciting. Technology becomes very powerful when all the stakeholders in the current system are made better off by this.
01:06:05 · Paul Spain, Jamie Beaton
[01:06:05] S1: So Yeah. [01:06:06] S0: Today, this gives parents a lot more visibility into schooling than they ever had before. It gives students, you know, global classmates, faster pace, a lot more choice, and these top curriculums, and then it gives teachers the ability to work from anywhere and also be amongst really inspiring peers all the time and be tapping into really exciting kids and have a lot of flexibility. So this is significantly more exciting for all the stakeholders than a previous physical school, and I think it's kind of the recipe for why I think this can be quite significant. So the schools of 2030, the schooling infrastructure of 2030 is inevitably gonna have a lot of families doing at least part time online learning and some kids that are, you know, quite significant doing full time online learning as well. And our school today, about 70% of kids are part time, 30% are full time. So the average kid's still engaged in a physical school using this to accelerate, but we are seeing, you know, a lot of full timers across New Zealand as well. So I'm really excited about this because I do think education is something that everyone in the world experiences, but it really hasn't evolved in a long time and requires, frankly, a lot of push to make it evolve. I But think we definitely have the push, and this is really moving quick. So that... That's kinda how I see this playing in for, you know, parents across the country to access this quite novel education system.
01:07:12 · Paul Spain, Jamie Beaton
[01:07:12] S1: Great. Well, I'm really interested to see how it evolves and Yes. Stay tuned. Keep it up. Interested in Yeah. And maybe some further discussion that down Totally. Down the track. Because I agree there are a lot of aspects of our education system that haven't really moved too much. [01:07:26] S0: Yeah. [01:07:26] S1: And, you know, we are in a very much in a technological Yeah. Digital age where, yeah, we we should be taking advantage of the the technology more. Looking forward to seeing how how it evolves. Anything else you'd like to add before we finish up, Jamie?