NZ Business Podcast - Paul Spain
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?
01:07:41 · Jamie Beaton
[01:07:41] S0: The last thing I'd add, I often say this to students, but I think it's really relevant to kind of entrepreneurs, business people listening, is that often you're really only limited by your ambition in terms of what, you know, what you wanna achieve. So I guess we started this when we were naive, still naive, but, you know, we foolishly think we could take on the world. And so just, you know, not having limitations like thinking, oh, you know, Russia's a funny market or, you China's a totally different world and just going for it can often get a really quite exciting result. So I would really encourage people to be really ambitious with their companies, think about what they can do offshore and how big they can make them. The second thing I would say is capital access has never been better. Particularly as a young person today, you know, the idea that my team of 25 year olds could raise all this capital, etcetera, it sounds a bit ridiculous, you know, a couple of years ago. But these days, there are many venture capital funds that wanna bet on good ideas with ambitious people that can create something meaningful. And that means that for, you know, young people and people in general, there's a lot more capital available to fuel ideas than ever before. Also, means the competitive environment has accelerated. So you... If you're just sitting there with a business growing at a certain pace and your competitors are raising venture capital and going very quickly, that's gonna put pressure on you too. So these dynamics basically speed up the life cycle of creating a company, and that's quite a powerful tool for entrepreneurs to use. So a couple of final remarks I'll leave the listener with.
01:08:53 · Paul Spain, Jamie Beaton
[01:08:53] S1: Excellent. Oh, well, thanks very much for coming on the show. [01:08:55] S0: Thanks, Paul. [01:08:56] S1: Really enjoyed it. Great news. I mean, we'll look forward to following where things head to from here, and wish you every success. [01:09:03] S0: Thank you. Appreciate it. You [01:09:04] S1: too. Alright. Thanks, Jamie. Well, I hope you enjoyed hearing from Jamie Beaton and learning about Crimson Education. Keep an eye out for a continuation of Crimson's incredible journey here on New Zealand Business Podcast. And be sure to listen in to our other episodes featuring many of New Zealand's most successful leaders, including founders such as Rod Drury of Xero, Cecilia and James Robinson of My Food Bag, sir Peter Beck of Rocket Lab, Brooke Roberts of Sharesies, sir Michael Hill, and many more. The New Zealand Business Podcast is brought to you by One New Zealand and my firm, Gorilla Technology. If your midsize or smaller organization is struggling with any aspect of IT, feel free to get in touch. I'd love to have a coffee with you. The New Zealand Business Podcast brought to you by Gorilla Technology, your strategic and proactive IT partner.