0:00

the first two years of your life, you learn more than

0:02

you learn the rest of your life. Brett Wigdortz

0:04

OBE is an educational disruptor, having

0:06

founded Teach First, and now tiny,

0:08

accessible childcare solutions for parents and

0:10

child grinders. Brett is here to

0:12

show you how to transform childcare

0:15

and teaching it. Children aren't these empty

0:17

vessels. I think my secondary schools are where

0:19

you make the biggest impact in your teenagers.

0:21

I actually realize, no, it's primary school has

0:23

had a much bigger impact in the lives

0:25

of children than secondary schools. My whole career

0:27

focus has been on ensuring all children get

0:29

access to an outstanding education. It's a sector

0:32

where you need a lot of adults and

0:34

there's not a lot of money. Nurseries only

0:36

pay minimum wage, sometimes less than minimum wage.

0:38

Earlier's education is a proper professional skill. You

0:40

guys can be leaders helping children to a

0:42

better future. It sometimes takes a new initiative

0:44

or a spark or a new tech to change

0:47

people's way of working. That's what I'm hoping we can

0:49

do at ChildTiny. What do you

0:51

think Tiny does better than anyone to

0:54

create that kind of space for

0:56

child grinders? I mean, what do

0:58

I think we do really well? Hello,

1:03

my fellow leaders. Welcome back to Anatomy

1:05

of a Leader with me, Maria Vorostrowski.

1:07

As you know, I'm tinkering away to

1:09

bring Anatomy of a Leader live in

1:11

a London location. So if you'd like

1:13

to be the first to know when

1:15

Anatomy of a Leader goes live, then

1:17

click the link in the show notes

1:19

to be added to the wait list.

1:21

This week, I speak with Brett Wigdort,

1:23

who after founding his successful educational charity

1:25

Teach First, realized that to make the

1:27

most impact, education needs to start much

1:29

earlier in a child's life. We talk

1:31

about Teach First and Tiny, his

1:33

latest startup, and why we need to

1:35

see child mining as a genuine profession

1:38

that needs to be compensated well. What

1:40

I admire most about Brett is how

1:42

passionate, driven and committed he is to

1:44

making a difference in all children's lives.

1:47

So without further ado, here

1:49

is Brett Wigdort. Brett, welcome

1:52

to Anatomy of a Leader. Thanks for having

1:54

me. So nice to have you here. And I

1:57

know it's taken us a while to sit

1:59

down and talk. properly. So, you know, thank you

2:01

for being patient. Yeah, I know. Thanks

2:03

for having me in this rainy day. Yeah,

2:05

wonderful English. Yeah. Well,

2:08

Brett, for those people who don't know

2:10

you, can you give

2:12

like a two minute introduction who

2:14

you are and what you're

2:17

doing with your business? Yeah,

2:19

sure. So I would say my whole

2:21

career focus has been on ensuring all

2:23

children get access to an outstanding education.

2:25

That's what I get very passionate about

2:27

that every child out there has great

2:29

ability, but we still live in a

2:31

society both in the UK and globally

2:33

where many children don't get access to the education

2:35

they need to make the most out of what

2:37

they're capable of. And I think that's a huge,

2:39

huge crime. So I was a

2:42

management I'm originally from America. I was a management

2:44

consultant for a while. I started

2:46

this charity Teach First in 2002. And

2:48

the whole idea of Teach First was to

2:50

get additional outstanding teachers into low income schools

2:52

and build a whole leadership cohort around this

2:54

mission of ensuring all children have access to

2:57

an outstanding education. I ran

2:59

that for 15 years and grew up to be

3:01

the largest graduate recruiter in the UK. So

3:04

I think we've now recruited about

3:06

20,000 teachers in England and a

3:08

whole wonderful group of entrepreneurial organizations

3:11

have flowed from that, whether you

3:14

know, things helping social work, things

3:16

helping policing, things helping all

3:19

sorts of other educational areas. Lots of head teachers has

3:21

been a lot that has come from that. I could

3:23

have found this thing Teach For All, which is this

3:25

global network. And I spent a lot of time now

3:28

in about like 30 or 40 countries around

3:30

the world helping get similar models in places

3:32

like India, Germany,

3:34

Australia, Chile, Lebanon, Israel,

3:36

all over the world, which has

3:39

been really exciting to build these

3:41

cohorts of amazing leaders who are

3:43

really focused on the needs of

3:45

low income kids. And

3:47

then about five years ago, I founded

3:50

Tiny. And that's what I'm working on now.

3:53

Tiny really led from this whole

3:55

idea I saw over the last 20 years, that

3:58

if you want to help children get access to education,

4:00

you have to start as early as possible. How

4:03

early? Well, I mean, you could say

4:05

from the moment they're born, even before they're born, I

4:07

think some people would say. Like listening

4:09

to, like playing Mozart to the pregnant

4:11

belly. Yeah.

4:14

I mean, you know, and I think there's so

4:16

much of it, you know, brain synapses and learning

4:18

happens so young. I mean, more

4:20

and more, there's more and more evidence over

4:23

the last 20 years that shows, you

4:25

know, actually, it's never too young. Actually, you

4:27

know, I mean, children are these empty vessels

4:30

are actually they're learning at a very young

4:32

age. And it is

4:34

really important for children to get access to a great earlier's

4:36

education setting. I visited

4:39

a lot of low income primary schools around the country.

4:41

And you could see the kids in year one and

4:43

two and three who didn't have access to that setting

4:45

when they were younger. And

4:47

they really struggled in school and primary school.

4:49

And that then goes into secondary school and

4:51

adulthood. And, you know,

4:53

if if policy was made in a

4:55

logical manner, more money would

4:57

be spent on earlier than on secondary schools,

4:59

because actually earlier is even more important, you

5:01

know, to get right. And I think very

5:03

few countries really see that for all sorts

5:05

of reasons. So, yeah. So what

5:08

is the biggest barrier to children

5:10

getting that early, you

5:13

know, early years education? Like, why do

5:15

some not get it at all? Yeah. Well,

5:17

I think one major virus, there's not

5:19

enough great educators in that sector. So

5:23

every country in the world, almost, especially

5:25

England, but many countries have this problem,

5:28

is we need more great early years educators.

5:30

Like there's just a shortage of people. So

5:32

obviously there's an amazing groups of people in

5:34

there who are amazing nursery workers and child

5:36

minders and, you know, early years educators, but

5:38

we need a lot more. You know, and

5:41

there's a massive shortage of them. It's often

5:43

the parents from wealthier backgrounds who get access

5:45

to good early years care for

5:47

their kids, while the children who actually probably need

5:49

it the most struggle to get that. And that's

5:51

true globally. So is it to

5:53

do with cost as well? I think cost is

5:55

a big issue. So, and this is what led me

5:58

to tiny and child binding is the idea of. And

8:00

now we actually understand like if they need to

8:02

get a really good professional experience,

8:05

they need a good earlier setting

8:07

and everything really to get those brain

8:10

synapses moving correctly and to actually learn what

8:12

they need to in order to be really

8:14

developed like the way that you want them

8:16

to develop as young kids. So

8:18

I think actually it's been a real

8:20

shift in knowledge and, you know, policy

8:22

hasn't necessarily caught up. Mm. Going

8:26

back to, you know, why you were so

8:28

interested in the whole education space in the

8:30

first place, where did that come from for

8:32

you? Well, my mom's a teacher

8:34

and my brother's a teacher and almost

8:37

all my aunts and uncles and cousins are teachers. I basically

8:39

come from all family teachers. A lot

8:41

of role models. A lot of role models. And I think

8:44

where it came to me when I

8:46

was working as a management consultant, I got on

8:48

a project looking at how businesses could help education

8:50

in London. And in 2002, schools in

8:52

London were not very good. And

8:55

in England, I'd say. I think for

8:58

all the problems people talk about in the country and all

9:00

these public policy issues, I do think

9:02

education has gotten a lot better in the last 20

9:04

years since sometimes we don't celebrate it. But, you

9:06

know, England now does have a pretty

9:08

good education system globally. And London especially

9:11

is one of the top ranked big

9:13

cities in the world, actually for education.

9:15

And that's been a total change. But I think 20 years

9:18

ago or 22 years ago, I

9:20

would visit a number of schools in London and it

9:22

was just shocking how bad they were, how

9:24

many schools where kids

9:26

were just kind of being housed. It felt

9:28

like there was no purpose for it. There

9:30

was no there was no like the

9:33

educators there didn't really have goals for the kid like

9:36

they were just sort of trying to keep them off

9:38

the street. And you saw, OK, these

9:40

were kids who have amazing potential. They could do

9:42

so much, but they're being let down by the

9:44

system. And that really struck me as

9:46

like this real tragedy. And I think this

9:48

is civil rights issue that, you know, you have a

9:51

whole groups of children who are being let down and

9:54

then into adulthood. And that

9:56

got me interested in starting Teach First and thinking there

9:58

is a solution at this. We know companies. in

32:00

their earlier space. There's only a few,

32:02

I'd say. There's them and Bubble, which

32:05

focuses on babysitters and all

32:07

pairs and also maybe nannies. Why

32:10

do you think there's such a gap? Why is this so key? Yeah.

32:13

I do wonder that sometimes because

32:15

it's a massive sector. I think

32:17

it's a really complicated sector. I

32:19

just say it is not easy.

32:21

We've spent five years now building

32:23

this platform that has

32:25

been with my two co-founders who are

32:28

very, very experienced, CTO

32:30

and Chief Product Officer, Ed

32:32

Reed and John Newbold, and their

32:34

teams. It is really like every problem we

32:36

saw, we found another problem. Even how

32:39

the government is paying in some

32:41

of these new payments that they're

32:43

doing through local authorities, which is

32:45

very complicated. I think the problem

32:47

is it's a sector that's very

32:49

complicated. I think it's

32:52

a sector where you need a lot of adults and

32:54

there's not a lot of money. That's the problem. That's

32:56

why nurses probably pay so little. I

32:59

also think there is still this old

33:02

belief that early years is not

33:05

sexy or something like that.

33:12

People don't really tell me just how important

33:14

early years is. Not only is it important

33:16

for the kids, but it's important for the

33:18

parents to get back to work. It is

33:20

important for the sector itself because there are

33:23

so many people working early years. There are more than

33:25

200,000 there

33:28

of people who are working early years

33:30

in England. They need a great sector

33:32

also. I think it's this massive

33:34

sector that people underestimate. Something you

33:36

said earlier about this idea of slightly

33:40

sexist views about how it's

33:42

the responsibility of the mother

33:44

to take care of her

33:46

children. Looking at any comments

33:48

around that on social media

33:50

like TikTok, it's like, it's

33:52

a woman's responsibility to take

33:54

care of the kids. Why

33:58

does she even want to go to have a job? And

34:00

it's her role to be with

34:02

her kids from the beginning. It's

34:07

somehow detrimental to the child to not

34:09

be with their parents. What are your

34:11

thoughts on that? Yeah,

34:13

I mean, so first of all, I

34:15

think it should be parents, like moms,

34:17

obviously. And I

34:20

do think there's some very old sexist things

34:22

that's still sort of ingrained in society that

34:25

we don't have to worry about small

34:27

kids because that's what moms are there

34:29

for, which seem like

34:31

they should be very historic. So personally, obviously,

34:34

it should be parents, not moms. I

34:37

think everything I've read is what's

34:39

great for small kids is a combination of

34:41

care. So I think,

34:44

first of all, every parent

34:46

has different situations. And

34:49

children are very resilient. And as long as

34:51

they have good quality, safe care, they'll be

34:53

in good shape. So that might be child

34:55

matters. It might be nurses. It might be

34:57

grandma. It might be grandpa. It might be

35:00

parents. But there's a lot.

35:02

Children can do well in lots of

35:04

different environments. I think what

35:06

a lot of people say the ideal is they spend some

35:08

time with parents. I think when

35:10

they're younger, child minders probably are better

35:12

than nurseries because child minders much more

35:14

mimic a family environment where it's like

35:17

in a house. It's with only

35:19

a few other kids who are kind of have a

35:21

sibling relationship. When they're under

35:23

three, you don't necessarily want them in

35:26

an institution type place. But

35:29

also, I think what somebody will say is having

35:31

some time with child minders, some time with nurseries,

35:33

so they get a bit of each is a

35:35

good experience. It's like replicating that kind of village

35:38

environment where

35:40

you've got more people who are

35:42

responsible for that child rather than

35:44

just one or two individuals. You've

35:47

got this set of grandparents, the cousins,

35:50

the friends, different age

35:52

groups. So the children absorb all

35:54

the different ways that you can

35:56

be cared for. But everyone's in

35:59

someone's. You

38:00

know, where I think what he's doing is him and his

38:02

wife are each doing, she's doing three months and he's doing

38:04

three months and she's doing three months and he's doing three

38:06

months. So they're going back and forth,

38:08

which just seems like a great thing for the child as

38:10

well as, you know, probably for both their careers are much

38:13

better than one person taking it. So

38:15

I wonder how much of it is a cultural thing

38:17

that some countries are doing much better and England's maybe

38:19

not doing quite as well. You know,

38:23

it's interesting. We've, we, about like four or

38:25

5% of our child winners are men. Most

38:27

are women. And, you know, 40

38:29

did you say? No, 4 or 5, like 95% are women.

38:33

Yes. Okay. So

38:35

yeah, because I was going to say 40, I feel like nearly like, you know, halfway that.

38:37

Yeah. We really struggle to get enough men. The

38:40

male child winners we have are amazing and they're full up. And

38:42

you know, I spent time with one recently and you could see

38:44

the kids love them and it's so much fun. And

38:47

I do wonder what else we can do

38:49

to even more normalize the fact that, you

38:51

know, men are

38:53

really good with small kids also. You

38:55

know, I think the best primary schools I

38:57

see is a lot of primary schools usually

39:00

work really hard to ensure they have quite

39:02

a lot of men working there as well

39:04

as women, because they usually now like kids

39:06

kind of need or like get something

39:09

different sometimes, especially like, you know, maybe

39:11

boys sometimes might get a little something

39:13

different from having male, you know, educators

39:15

as well as female educators. And I

39:17

think, yeah, I think, you

39:19

know, maybe something we could think of as a society, like, you know,

39:21

how do we normalize it even more? I

39:24

mean, I do wonder some of it is

39:26

like, you know, this sounds crazy, but like, you

39:28

know, I think earlier, earlier education should be really

39:30

professionalized. And I think England

39:32

is moving that direction in some ways, like having

39:34

this earlier as foundation, its curriculum, it should be

39:36

seen as like a really important profession. And,

39:40

you know, as a profession, you know, attracting both

39:42

genders and all genders, like in

39:45

lots of ways. Yeah, I

39:47

mean, I think, you know, I think there's something from parents that

39:49

they're Yeah, I mean, I think, you

39:52

know, I think there's something from parents to be honest,

39:54

I know some parents, you know,

39:56

really just want a woman to take care of their

39:58

small children. any,

40:00

I don't know, all sorts of reasons, I think that they

40:03

might think. But I mean, I

40:05

don't know how to educate, like, you know,

40:07

people, especially who are child matters or nurseries,

40:09

these are well trained, safeguarded,

40:12

ever, you know, wonderful educators. And I think

40:14

I would say to parents also like there's

40:16

advantages that they should be looking for to

40:19

have. It's like a chicken in the

40:21

egg, isn't it? It's the same situation in schools. I

40:23

mean, predominantly, you know, I don't have the stats, but,

40:25

you know, just paying attention to my own kids schools

40:27

and how I've grown up. You

40:30

know, throughout most of, you

40:32

know, the education system, you know,

40:34

there are predominantly female teachers until

40:37

you probably get to maybe, you

40:39

know, you know, university. So there

40:41

is this subconscious just was

40:43

like, well, teachers are just female, you

40:45

know, or child minders, they're just female.

40:48

And so, you know, when you grow up

40:50

and you haven't been in the childcare system yourself,

40:53

you it's like it's just in

40:55

you. And you think, well, that's just the way it

40:57

is. And I think, you know, for

41:00

when it comes to making policies, if

41:02

that's what your belief is, then it's

41:04

going to be even harder to bring

41:06

in more kind of like male teachers,

41:08

male, early educate, early years

41:11

educators. And it's kind

41:14

of like this. Yeah. Catch 22. No,

41:16

I agree. No, I mean, I've seen some

41:19

primary schools where you talk to the head teacher and the

41:21

head teacher has a real strategy around it. OK, so I

41:23

would say the best teachers like

41:26

actually think this through. And

41:28

I mean, I'm just thinking about one school where,

41:30

you know, the head teacher works

41:33

hard to get teaching assistants, for instance, who

41:35

are men and then helps them become teachers

41:37

or has, you know, maybe some students from

41:39

the school who are like 18, 19

41:41

year old, you know, who are

41:43

in charge of like the sports in the

41:46

schools or teaching a system that really works

41:48

hard to like develop male

41:50

teachers in their schools. So

41:53

I think it's like all issues, right? You need

41:55

like any diversity issue. Like sometimes if it's not

41:57

happening, you need to really work hard and prioritize

41:59

it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. How

42:02

do you see Tiny developing

42:04

over the next few years? Currently,

42:08

we're looking to really scale. The

42:11

last six months, we've been about half of all new

42:13

child miners in the country. But I

42:15

keep on going back to the stat that France has

42:17

10x, 10 times as

42:20

many child miners as England. I feel like there's so much

42:23

scaling we can do and support

42:25

more and more child miners in the country. We're

42:28

working with this new government entitlement, where

42:30

the government is putting a lot of

42:32

money into early years. But there's not

42:34

really the educators available to

42:36

do it. They really focus on growing demand,

42:38

but not the supply. So

42:40

we're hoping to grow supply and

42:42

really support our child miners. We're doing a lot

42:45

of product development to make it

42:47

easier for our child miners to work with

42:49

the government payment schemes and even improve the

42:51

support we're giving them even more. We've

42:54

started to talk to

42:57

people in a few other countries because I think

42:59

over time, our

43:01

product and this tiny model

43:04

could work in many other countries around the world. I

43:07

certainly, for my time at Teach for All, have seen that

43:09

this is a global issue. But

43:12

I think to me, there's no reason why

43:14

we can't attract some great people all over

43:16

the place to become child miners and

43:19

work in this sort of system. What

43:21

seems impossible to you now, but

43:24

should you achieve that, will change the course of your

43:26

business or your life? Nothing

43:29

ever seems impossible to me, which is

43:31

probably because that's probably my strength and

43:33

my weakness sometimes. We started Teach

43:36

First. I remember saying, no, I want this to

43:38

be massive, be the biggest graduate career in

43:40

the country. It was. So we Teach

43:42

First became bigger than Press

43:44

for the Scuba or Deloitte or any other graduate

43:46

career. And I certainly think tiny could do

43:48

the same. So I think what

43:51

seems impossible to many people is

43:53

I go back to the fact, why

43:55

can't we have 100,000 plus child miners in

43:57

this country? So I've talked to people

43:59

in government. everywhere who seem

44:01

to think child mining is just

44:04

going to keep on having a slow decline. But

44:06

we had 100,000 child miners in England about 25

44:09

years ago. Like I said, there's twice that number

44:11

in France. There's definitely

44:13

many more than 100,000 people in England who would

44:16

be great child miners, who would actually love to

44:18

work from home if they could earn a professional

44:20

salary and have that flexibility and help lead small

44:22

kids and have that support. I

44:25

think what seems impossible to many people is could

44:27

the number of child miners rather than decline,

44:30

less as been for 25 years, grow and

44:32

actually three or four times as many as

44:34

we have today. And I was

44:36

using AlgaeV and Airbnb. There always were people

44:38

renting out their house, but it wasn't until

44:40

Airbnb came along and then suddenly the numbers

44:42

shot upwards. And if someone said,

44:45

do we ever think there'll be like 20 times

44:47

as many people renting out their houses in London?

44:49

You'd say, no, of course not. No one wants

44:51

to do that. But it sometimes takes a new

44:53

initiative or a spark or a new tech to

44:55

change people's right of working. So I mean, that's

44:57

what I'm hoping we can do a child minder.

45:00

Do you think there is some education around like

45:02

with parents to be working with more child minders?

45:04

Do you think that's part of the challenge? I

45:07

mean, a little bit, but actually most parents like

45:09

child minders. So our child minders usually can find

45:12

parents. And

45:14

I think it is a return. I want parents to have

45:16

the same sort of experience that they have with

45:19

a nursery when they work with a tiny

45:21

child minder. So contracts billing, they get weekly

45:23

reports, like everything you'd expect from a very

45:25

high nursery using our tech, like

45:27

they should get from our child minders too.

45:30

So that should make their lives easy. I

45:32

think most parents love child minders because it's

45:34

flexible. It's usually nice to home. They have

45:36

a lovely relationship with the child minder. It's

45:38

like a second family, you know, kids love

45:40

it. So the big

45:42

problem is, is supplies, finding people to become

45:44

child minders and making them realize actually this

45:46

is a really good job. Yeah. And

45:50

apart from, you know, providing the

45:52

tech platform and, you know, a

45:55

safe place for the child minders and

45:57

creating that community, what do you think

46:00

Tiny does exceptionally

46:02

well better than anyone to create

46:05

that kind of space for child

46:07

minders? I mean, what I

46:10

think we do really well is first of all, we

46:12

create all the support around them.

46:14

And I think there's some just really complicated things you have

46:16

to do day to day, where if you're a child minder,

46:18

you don't want to spend hours doing all this

46:20

admin and taxes

46:22

and contracts and everything, you know, so we

46:24

try to make that easy. But then I

46:26

feel we've built a really exciting community where,

46:29

you know, we just have that where about

46:31

300 of them are coming together, you know,

46:33

in person, we do lots of training events

46:35

online all the time, lots of community events,

46:37

where small groups then get together with their

46:39

kids, lots of online

46:41

community things. So, you know, they shouldn't

46:43

feel lonely, like they should feel they're

46:45

an educator, a professional part of this

46:47

professional community that's really active and supportive.

46:51

How can people find you? What's the best way to reach

46:54

out? Yeah, I mean, we're just the website is T-I-N-E-Y,

46:57

E-Y for

47:00

earlier, it's a head.co. And

47:02

I mean, that's a website, if people want to, if

47:04

their parents out there are looking for child minding for

47:06

their kids, you know, go there, you could find child

47:08

minders. We have, I think now about

47:10

a thousand, a little over a thousand now all over

47:12

the country, everywhere in England, we just opened our first

47:15

one, the Isles of Silly, I

47:17

don't want to mispronounce it, which is exciting. And

47:20

I think for people out there who are looking for a new career,

47:22

and, you know, love working with

47:24

kids, I mean, come check us out, we could

47:26

help you, you know, start a new career. That's

47:28

really exciting. Amazing. Well,

47:30

Brett, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really

47:34

wonderful speaking with you. And yeah, I

47:36

think what you're doing is so

47:38

valuable, especially for, you

47:41

know, I kind of want to address parents, but

47:43

I think particularly women, because I think that early

47:45

stage of being able to, you know, really, you

47:48

know, have a safe place to

47:51

have your kids being taken care of, that

47:53

you can continue being on that journey of,

47:55

you know, your kind of career progression, and

47:58

for all of the parents up there. Well,

48:00

thank you very much and really lovely to meet you.

48:02

Thanks. Nice to meet you too. You've

48:04

been listening to Anatomy of a

48:07

Leader with me, Maria Vorostovsky. Each

48:09

week I read some of the

48:11

reviews that you leave on Apple

48:13

Podcasts. This week we have Jamie

48:16

W0112. Insightful

48:19

listen. Maria's guests are

48:21

interesting and diverse and the conversations

48:23

are always very insightful. This

48:26

has climbed to the top of my

48:28

list of my favourite work business podcasts,

48:30

a must listen for leaders and aspiring

48:32

leaders. Thank you so much,

48:34

Jamie. Really appreciate all of your reviews

48:36

and please keep them coming. And if

48:38

you like these inspiring stories of leaders

48:40

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48:50

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48:52

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