Does education technology have the potential to help fill Britain's skills gaps? And will greater use of education technology help students learn the digital skills they will need for work?
The answer to that is broadly yes. Qualified by, I am much more enthusiastic about education technology as a way of enhancing humans rather than replacing them. So whilst there are some examples, for instance Duolingo, where there's some merit in learning that particular skill solely using a machine, I think it's probably better used in conjunction with a teacher.
You can point to YouTube as a way that lots of people are learning how to do lots of things from cooking, to mending their cars.
But, where able, you can also refer things which are not entirely clear from the video to an expert teacher.
There's also the potential around artificial intelligence to enhance teaching that I think is really exciting and really interesting. The potential of technology to elevate skills transfer at a peer-to-peer level, is also really interesting and exciting.
I think we're just at the beginning of imagining how you could create an educational ecosystem with technology tools embedded alongside human teaching.
But there is a massive danger that we overlay technology on the pedagogies and the curriculum. Say for instance, ‘okay, this thing that we currently do that we might not have a specialist teacher for, can we get technology to replace it?’ Or ‘can we access technology and carry on teaching the same way, but to 40 kids rather than 30 kids?’
What role do you think the metaverse will play in educating students in the future?
My now 32-year-old son was, 18 years ago, pretty much addicted to World of Warcraft. So that immersive gaming technology that had an element of social interaction and has user generated content is quite compelling and there is also something interesting around thinking about gamified pedagogy to engage learners too.
I think we should also be ensuring that every child has good access to nature and the inspiration of real life, real people, real environments. It's all part of the mix.
With UK digital technology exports set to reach £31.5bn by 2025, what potential do you believe education technology has as an export?
I'm on the board of CENTURY Tech, which is an AI-powered learning tool for maths, English and science. We've got a pretty big market in international schools, which is another sector I'm quite involved with.
Then there is the potential of business-to-government sales. I was speaking with someone recently about how excited and interested Vietnam’s government is around using some of our technologies and expertise.
Now, it's also true to say I think the investment environment for edtech here in the UK is not as strong as it needs to be. It's much, much easier to raise money in the US, particularly Silicon Valley, than it is here.
I am much more enthusiastic about education technology as a way of enhancing humans rather than replacing them
That's attached to a whole number of different factors and Multiverse is our first alleged billion-pound unicorn [a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion] in the ed tech space. It is possible here, but Euan had to go to the States to raise it.
The brand and reputation of British education is really strong internationally. We can see that with the exponential growth in the British international schools, British qualifications, and British higher education. It is a really important brand identifier for Britain.
So why wouldn't our technology that is used for learning also be exported? There are constraints, however, and obstacles.
What is the health of the edtech sector like at the moment?
I don't think it's 100 per cent healthy. It is possible to seek funding but much harder to get serious funding when a new tech business is getting started. It’s a real problem.
There are very, very few examples of businesses over a valuation of five to ten million. And that's something that needs to be understood and that goes to the heart of my worries about the investment climate.
When I was looking into acquisitions, there's not much out there of scale. So instead, you either have to look harder to see where there might be. Or you end up buying some small, probably teacher-founded bit of edtech that's solving a problem, is clever, is a nice product, and will be well-researched and well-designed because the teacher’s done it. And it doesn't cost so much money, it’s a few million to buy it. But that changes the life of the individual founder and then you have to integrate it and build it.
You have to use your own market penetration to land it, as well.
With private equity funding, it's just a bit of a ball ache because the owners want to double their money quickly. They've got a two- or three-year timeframe.
Do you think the lack of investment is the same in the US and the UK, or is it really a UK-focused problem?
It might be a European problem. It might be a rest of the world problem and it's only in North America where there is just that stronger appetite. But right now, it's hard to raise money anywhere.