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In 1999, a friend of mine came to me and asked if I could help get his child’s school out of financial difficulties. That school was Arnold Lodge School in Leamington Spa, which had an excellent reputation because the class sizes were small and the teachers so caring and competent. To me, it seemed tragic that my friend’s son, who had been born with difficulties and had needed a series of operations, would have to leave a school that he loved. Thus, I started negotiations to buy it.

As soon as my cousin, Gareth Newman, heard about the plight of the school, he also expressed an interest in helping and so we bought it together. This sort of altruistic gesture was typical of a man who had dedicated his whole life to helping others. Out of all the people I have met in education, Gareth is one who has greatly inspired me. He is a dedicated man who sees potential in children and would obsessively focus on helping them until he had exposed that potential. At one time, he was the youngest headmaster in Britain and subsequently had a number of headships before finally being asked to develop Corby City Technology College on a green-field site. This Institute achieved phenomenal success in helping children, and Gareth’s efforts were rewarded in 2000 when he was given a CBE for his Services to Education.

I think watching Gareth at work gave me hope that there might be more skill and ability in everyone, especially those labelled ‘thick’ or ‘stupid’. At the time we were developing Arnold Lodge School, I asked him how he had made such a difference for the children in Corby. He told me one of the most important things he discovered was the importance of encouraging children to set their own targets. Instead of being told what they needed to achieve, they felt a sense of ownership about their own progress. The other thing he said was important was the regular measurement of their progress so that both children and teachers could see what they were achieving, which they find remarkably motivating.

One day, I put it to him that, if we developed a simple online system to do exactly what he described and that all teachers could use, surely his methods could be made available nationally and help large numbers of children achieve their potential.

Following this conversation, we put together a plan to develop software that could be used to help assess children on a national scale. The dream was that we would create online tests that would be multiple-choice and fun for children to do, whether or not they were learning impaired. This would give teachers extremely important information about how they were doing compared to national averages. It was great fun working on these projects and we managed to make the assessments really enjoyable for children to do. The software developers built in some great features, including each child being able to sit a unique test. The teacher could then use this tool as often as needed to identify all the areas where each child was weak, so that they would know exactly what to teach. It also made a graph of the progress to show the real contribution the teacher was making, which was very rewarding to the often undervalued work of the teacher assigned to lower-ability groups.

As a bonus, we found children with weaker reading and writing skills showed their true ability, as multiple-choice questions more accurately identified their actual level of knowledge in the subject being tested.

Another feature we built in, probably triggered by my concern for children with learning issues, was that, if a child was struggling to answer the questions, the computer would simplify them so that the child did not become stressed or discouraged. Conversely, the particularly bright child, without realising it was happening, might well have the level of the assessment taken up a notch if all the answers in the early stages were being answered correctly. Thus, within minutes of the completion of this instant-access system the teacher would have a full audit of the knowledge and needs of each member of the class. What a way to drive progress in the classroom, and what an easy way to bring out the best in each and every one of a large class! Not only did Gareth and I get a real buzz out of it but so did the children we worked with using the product we finally called GOAL – Global Online Assessment of Learning.

So the first challenge we had was that the Labour government at that time had made wonderful promises about how rapidly they were going to connect all schools to the internet with broadband connectivity. We soon realised that, as is often the case, they did not always live up to their word and it would be several years before every school had the capability to use the products we had developed. But what also surprised us was how scared some teachers were to try a new concept. Many resisted it as they had their tried and trusted methods for assessing children, which, in our view, gave them very little valuable data to help them steer children through the learning process.

Nevertheless, the company continued to grow and went on to become Educational Development International (EDI plc) and merge with the London Chamber of Commerce Examination and Industry Examination Board (LCCIB). It has since become part of Pearson plc.

In 2005, the school that had made the most progress in the country – the Holy Family Catholic Primary School in Addlestone, Surrey – was using the innovative assessment product for schools, developed by EDI. It gives me great satisfaction to know that teachers and students love using this tool to set targets and evaluate their progress. I really hope it catches on everywhere.