The Times Magazine 59Once they have worked their way through
the compulsory central core, which gives
them basic programming skills, they can
choose to specialise in subjects such as
artificial intelligence, cybersecurity or gaming.
Yonas Million, 33, is learning the software
language Go. A former football scout, he
decided to retrain and started at 01 Founders
in October. “Technology is the future,” he
says. “This is free and you’re guaranteed a job
at the end.” He finds the self-directed learning
more effective than a traditional school.
“You’re not just sitting in front of someone
feeling bored and if you help other people you
reinforce the knowledge.” Rachel Ajayi, 22,
agrees. She started an engineering degree at
university but switched to 01 Founders after
a few months and has found the teacherless
approach more stimulating. “When you
are in lectures you might not retain all the
information; you forget things. I’m learning
much more now. If you’ve worked something
out for yourself you remember it.”
Some of the students risked everything to
get a place here. Arnold Mutungi, 29, left his
job in sales to take part in the three-week
selection panel. “I couldn’t get the time off
and I was certain that this was what I wanted
to do,” he says. “I’ve always had an interest
in tech, but I thought I had missed the boat
because I didn’t study computer science
at uni.” Others have turned adversity into
opportunity during the pandemic. Anne-Marie
Hardie, 25, was freelancing at the BBC when
Covid-19 hit, so she decided to retrain when
the work dried up. “I really enjoy playing
video games and I want to be a game
developer,” she says. “I like it here. It’s easier
to bounce off someone who is learning
alongside you. If you understand something
you can explain it better than a lecturer and
you feel more comfortable asking for help.”
Chief executive Joysy John left a career in
banking to go into education and was director
of education at the innovation foundation
Nesta before joining 01 Founders. She says she
is determined to increase the diversity of the
people working in tech.
“Twenty-five years ago, when I studied
computer engineering, one in four were
female. Today that number is less than 13 per
cent in universities. The tech world has certain
stereotypes; the big tech companies are all run
by white men. You need more role models,
and you need more relevant education. The
way technology is being taught in schools is
very outdated. It’s very theoretical, and so
students don’t realise the value of technology
in music and sports and medicine. A lot of
girls want to make a difference so they go
down the path of health or humanities.They don’t realise that if you learn to code,
not only do you control your own future, but
you can shape society.”
She is convinced the teacherless approach
could be more widely applied. “Definitely for
maths. We’ve been talking to one of the
architects who wants to apply this peer-to-
peer learning model to architecture.”
Hoberman hopes his innovative coding
school might prompt a wider rethink in
education to put more emphasis on teamwork,
creativity and emotional intelligence. “There’s
a danger when you look at the future of work
that the computers are going to do all the
repetitive tasks very well so they will replace
workers doing that. So you have to think of
doubling down on the things that computers
aren’t going to be able to do for a very long
time – the creativity, critical thinking and
leadership, those sorts of skills.”
At the moment schools focus on a narrow
form of academic intelligence, driven by the
exam system, when employers need a broader
range of skills – “things like emotional
intelligence. You can be totally emotionally
unintelligent and do super-well in school. The
smartest people I knew at school didn’t do
that well in life because they neglected all
the other skills.”
There should, he suggests, be
entrepreneurship classes, alongside grammarand algebra, “as a practical way of showing
why maths is interesting”. Children would also
be taught what it takes to succeed in business.
“One of the key things is tenacity – how do
you get over the hurdles and knock down
barriers? It’s confidence and it’s salesmanship- which is the other thing we need in schools:
how do you sell? There should be more
emphasis on public speaking. And then it is
lateral thinking, thinking outside the box,
being a maverick. It’s the maverick stuff that
I think schools do very badly on the whole,
which is why so many entrepreneurs are
dyslexic or dropouts of the traditional routes
and have been brilliant in some other way.”
He thinks technology could help revitalise
creativity and curiosity in schools. “There’s
much more that you could do if you combine
virtual reality and gamification techniques.
Children get addicted to playing Clash
of Clans, so you could do that with an
educational game too.”
Parents are already worried about the
amount of time their children spend on
a screen, but Hoberman insists that the
potential for education is huge.
“People are spending 50 per cent of their
lives on screens anyway. I’m not saying we
make it more, but of that 50 per cent, let’s
use it in more interesting ways,” Hoberman
says. That doesn’t mean all schools going
teacherless, or pupils staring robotically at
a computer all day, but it could be a way of
opening up resources and levelling the playing
field. He persuaded Eton to set up a platform
with online courses in university preparation,
entrepreneurship, communication skills
and leadership. It has already been used by
800,000 state school pupils. “Rather than the
Labour way of saying, ‘Just do away with these
great institutions,’ keep what’s best of Britain
but bring it to more people.”
When Hoberman was setting up
Lastminute.com, he was warned that
consumers would miss the personal touch of
the travel company if bookings moved online.
He would always reply that those businesses
were dependent “on their worst call centre
operatives, whereas if it’s a database, you’re
talking about your worst line of code”. People
who argue that education must be delivered
by a teacher in a classroom “are not accounting
for the discrepancy between the best and
worst teacher”, he says. “Technology enables
everybody to have the best lecturer or teacher,
rather than so many people having ones that
are not very good.” In the case of 01 Founders,
that means having no teachers at all. n
Rachel Sylvester chairs The Times
Education CommissionWith 01 Founders CEO Joysy JohnHE PERSUADED ETON TO
SET UP ONLINE COURSES
USED BY 800,000 STATE
SCHOOL PUPILS
SEB HIGGINS