TRANSCRIPT: School leadership, navigating constant change with Simon Freeman at IRIS Education
In this episode (233), I’m in conversation with Simon Freeman at IRIS Education, talking about bringing the school community back together, the constant change school leaders have been experiencing and getting on board with agile processes.
Sophie Bailey:
Great. So Simon, fantastic to have you on The Edtech podcast. Welcome. You’re the managing director for education for Iris software group. And if I’ve done my homework correctly, you started there this June, 2021?
Simon Freeman:
I did. Yeah. Coming up to five months now. So yes, I am been there five months and a very exciting and a steep learning curve, it’s been in those five months.
Sophie Bailey:
Yeah. That’s quite, that’s quite the turning point. Isn’t it? When you start a new role. So I think the first month’s always that sort of information collecting and intelligence gathering, and then it’s kind of, then it’s the implementation of strategy.
Simon Freeman:
Exactly. And I have to say, this is my first dedicated education role. So I feel honoured to be invited by you on here today. But so the technology bit I’m quite comfortable with and I’ve got quite a long grounding in technology in the public sector. But its application into education. I mean it’s probably, I think the most exciting area where I think technology can make some dramatic changes to society, but yeah, it’s been a steep learning curve, so not only have I been doing the business, I’ve also been learning quite a bit about education as well.
Sophie Bailey:
Yeah. And what a time to join because I mean everything has completely changed in, in education in terms of the role of technology in the last 18 months or so. So, you know, a great time to, to take to that…
Simon Freeman:
Indeed. And my previous role I was working in local government for the last kind of three years or so. And you know, there’s quite a lot of parallels, I think, of the adoption of technology and how, you know, there was this kind of, “oh my gosh” moment, how are we going to continue to deliver services and support people and support you know, residents, you know, through, through the pandemic? And I can see quite a lot of parallels with how education has had to handle some of the same challenges and actually some of the benefits I think they’ve come out the back of it. So yeah, really interesting parallels to observe.
Sophie Bailey:
Yeah, I can relate to that because before doing this I used to work in tech events, but in different sectors. So whether that was healthcare or cities or what was then mobile payments, and there was always this clash of cultures somewhat between, you know, the tech industry absolutely chomping at the bit, going a million miles an hour and perhaps a more cautious or you know, slow, slower pace to some of these other verticals because, because of the caution around users and that kind of thing. So yeah.
Simon Freeman:
Yeah. I’ve probably spent the last 15 years navigating exactly that point that you make, which is, you know, there’s this fantastic, shiny tech, but heck if it goes wrong, that’s going to cause a dramatic, you know, issue for the users or the, you know, the, you know, the services that people rely on and people rely on this stuff that every single day and that tension between the need for change, which is, you know, always paints a brighter future, but the very sensible and calm, you know, risk management that needs to go on to not adopt, not adopt that and it go wrong, but to adopt it and see the benefits. And I think navigating that is a really, really interesting dynamic, which if I’m honest is part of the reason why I’ve ended up here in education, because I think that dynamic exists so powerfully in the need to be able, you know, the opportunity to use technology, to improve outcomes for students. But the risk of making sure you don’t get it wrong.
Sophie Bailey:
Definitely. I mean, so on that point, and then, then we’ll go into some of my questions cause it’s just really fascinating bouncing back and forth. But I guess, I guess the opportunity cost was slightly more critical say sort of 10, 15 years ago when I’m just thinking some of the legacy systems, it would have been much more sort of a big investment in hardware, whereas perhaps now through the changes that can happen through the cloud with software, you know, you can think, okay, well, we’ll invest in this. And there is that idea that you can tweak as you go along, as opposed to it being like, this is what you get and it’s a monolith and that’s it kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Simon Freeman:
And I’m completely recognized that. And I think when I started one of my last jobs, which is actually working with central government and we’re talking probably 2016, 2017, so not, not that long ago one of the procurement exercises we were running, we were proposing going to AWS as one of the hosted platforms. And there was this absolute aversion to using a cloud-hosted infrastructure. We don’t know where it is, right. It could be anywhere in the world. Is it secure? And you know, the department at the time who I won’t name and shame went forward with a hosted design, less than three years later, governments, wholesale adoption of, you know, AWS platforms and cloud and Azure and all the rest of it. So I think that that thinking is catching up rapidly, but the other concerns at the time were right because the technology hadn’t been proven in quite the same way. But I think once, you know, industry demonstrates to users that actually you can have that agility and you can have the security and all the rest of it. Clearly the benefits are huge then.
Sophie Bailey:
Definitely. Yeah. So, so talking about software well, right, let’s start right at the beginning, cause I’m really interested in that background and how it relates to what you’re doing now. I’ve got your bio here it says that you know, you joined in June, you’re driving forward IRIS’s evolution leading the education offering and focusing on meeting the needs of senior leadership teams in multi-academy trusts and independent schools. But what I’d love is if you want to introduce yourself, how you would go about doing that, so who you are and what you do.
Simon Freeman:
Hey, okay. So Simon Freeman, I’m actually a mechanical engineer by background. That’s my question, what happens in software, but I’m an engineer by background. And I probably spent the last 10 years leading technology applications and technology installations into, into the public sector. You know, the things we just talked about and I’m incredibly honoured to be here leading IRIS’s education business, and an Iris delivers software and services to over 12,000 schools across the UK and internationally. And as a business, we are passionate about making sure that schools have the tools and technologies, this modern tools and technologies that can get them away from the, you know, the constraints of software that probably existed far back in the nineties and really unlocking some of the potential that comes with that software. And that’s what led me into this business. And I’m incredibly excited to be responsible as part of that team for leading, leading that initiative.
Sophie Bailey:
Thanks. That’s great. And yeah, I’ve got here, you worked across many different sectors, but all in service excellence. So we talked a little bit about some of those just previously, but what was the most eye-opening experience when you’ve worked previously across defence or your international roles or local government?
Simon Freeman:
I’ve, I’ve got a couple actually. I spent a little bit of time in the ministry of defence. And I remember sitting down and talking to one of the Oracle reps at the time and Oracle runs a big chunk of the back office payroll for the MoD, and he just casually said, you do know that you guys have got the largest single Oracle implementation running payroll anywhere in Europe? And there was this kind of stony silence in the room where we thought, and we know how complicated it is. So yeah, that was quite, quite a moment. And in local government actually, I think at the start of the pandemic, seeing how local government across the UK did a flipping amazing job in adopting technology and shifting some of that services online. And maybe we touched on some of this later in the podcast, but there was always this discussion and I think it existed across government where there was potentially the digitally excluded people who couldn’t didn’t have access to, you know, smartphones and technology.
Simon Freeman:
And therefore everything actually needed to be face-to-face as well in order to embrace. And what we saw was actually there wasn’t that digital exclusion and that people very quickly adopted those you know, those, those routes by which they needed to communicate. And in fact ended up bringing in many people who would otherwise not have been engaged in services and being able to access services that wouldn’t have got either through language support, because we were able to translate things in different languages or that they weren’t physically able to get there and, and receive the services and they could get them digitally. So yeah, I’ve seen some very interesting and exciting sort of projects with government.
Sophie Bailey:
I think that’s really, really great. I mean, that’s really challenging assumptions. So, you know, I guess you get these prevailing narratives and you know, yes, yes. There are people that will, you know be penalized by the digital divide, but also you then engage with other people. So it always takes picking apart. Just very quickly on the point about the large Oracle project relaying that back to multi-academy trust leaders who may feel sometimes overwhelmed the scale of the task ahead. How would you, how would you kind of use that experience to you know, offer any advice for when you sometimes feel like, oh, this is such a big project and how to sort of tackle that as well?
Simon Freeman:
I think choosing the right partner is absolutely key and making sure that you’ve done your due diligence and that you’ve really explored exactly how this is going to work. I mean, there’s, it’s really easy for everyone to paint the brighter future, but the steps by which you need to take to get there can be quite challenging, especially in an organization like Multi-Academy Trust, where there probably isn’t the significant infrastructure around change and therefore diverting, you know, critical finance people’s times, or you know, worst case educators at times away from what they’re supposed to be doing. It’s really important that you get that planning. Right. And I think working with the right partner, who’s got the experience, who’s got the scale who can you know, pull in the necessary resources when inevitably things don’t quite go to plan and they can step in and try and help.
Simon Freeman:
I think that would be absolutely key. And the second thing I would say is to talk to your peers, and I know this happens brilliantly across the multi-academy trusts, but, you know, certainly learn from the experiences of others. And there are inevitably going to be some early adopters and they will get the benefits earlier, but that also takes some of the risks. And then there’ll be some of those people who are once they see the benefits and have a way of mitigating those risks, they’ll be more comfortable about moving along that change curve. So I think those would probably be my, my two, my two key points.
Sophie Bailey:
Excellent. so I mean, why we kind of got together today was to talk about this idea of constant change. And I think I’ve had this conversation previously where people talk about sort of digital transformation and it’s quite appealing to think, you do the project then it’s done. And as you will know, with your work with local government, like there’s always more to do. And, and certainly in education as well, like, you know, digital is constantly changing. That’s constantly having an effect, on us as individuals and in our work and in our education side of things as well. And so, you know, the experience of the past 18 months for anyone in the education sector has been hard and tiring, and everyone will also recognize there’s been sort of benefits that have come out of it as well.
Sophie Bailey:
So some of that moving to digital processes but how do we sort of go beyond that, the comfort of then, you know, returning to this idea that the change has happened and now where we’re back and we’re sat in there to kind of embracing the idea that this sort of change is constant, but without feeling overwhelmed by it. So how would you, how, how have you kind of seen the impact talking to your partners and any advice on sort of then embracing that, but doing it in a way that doesn’t feel chaotic?
Simon Freeman:
And you used that word chaotic at the end. And I think, you know, in the early days of the pandemic, it was a bit chaotic. You know, the schools were battling with some really quite frankly old infrastructure, you know, nobody had had to do a virtual lesson before. I mean I think we did a survey of schools a while ago, and I think 70% of teachers said that they had not done a virtual lesson, a full virtual lesson before the pandemic. And then being able, you know, having to do that on scale, I think it was a bit chaotic and some of the tools and infrastructure that wasn’t available early on, which is available now you know, it took a little bit of time to, to, to arrive. And I think as a school’s adopted that we can clearly see some of the benefits that’s come from it.
Simon Freeman:
And as we start to return, I guess, to a slight sense of normality I think there’s clear advantages in keeping some of that technology available. And, you know, we talked about digital inclusion a few minutes ago. There’s always going to be people maybe who can’t make it into the classroom for whatever reason. Well, actually you can continue education and we can continue engaging with you. And, and some of the knock-on benefits about maybe engaging further with parents and making sure that actually parents are more engaged in into our children’s education as well in a way that they might not have been previously. I think there are huge benefits that have come out of you know, of what we’ve seen over the last 18 months or so, but, but to your point about change as well, I think we often look at some of these things as technology problems, and I don’t think they are. I think technology obviously has a role to play, but it’s much around the people’s behaviour and how we change our, our processes and the way that we use that technology that has as much an impact on whether the technology is successful or whether it doesn’t get used in the right way or not.
Sophie Bailey:
I’m really interested to dig into that because my personal experience as a parent as well is that there was a really interesting and unfortunate fragmentation that happened when you suddenly had these different groups of learners. You know, you had the children that could get back into school as children of Key workers. And so they were within the physical classroom, you had others. And the school obviously has a role in terms of compliance and keeping everyone safe. But that then had a knock on in my personal experience of the flow of information and that, that, that sense of a cohesive school community and the wider benefits of having information flowing in and out. And I don’t think it’s quite got back to sort of since before the pandemic. So yeah, I’m quite interested to know how technology can help keep that together. And, you know, we’ve seen some examples like parents evening online, which means perhaps that maybe more people can be involved in it, than previously, but yeah, I mean a slight, slight insight as well. So it’s, it’s creating these processes and making sure that they are lean and efficient.
Simon Freeman:
Yeah. And it’s interesting to hear your experience of that kind of in-classroom remote classroom blend and what you say about not being as connected as, as maybe somebody who’s in the classroom. And I think probably early on, we definitely saw quite a lot of that. I think the, you know, things like parent mail and, and our other communication products there is, and it depends on how the schools use them, but there was really that, that opportunity to actually engage parents a lot more. I think in a child’s education, I was speaking to a parent who was actually an Iris reach customer, which is another one of our engagement tools. And she was telling me I’ve never been so engaged, in my child’s education. I didn’t know what they were learning in the classroom every day and seeing, you know, such detailed reports. And obviously, that means that you can engage a lot more in the evening around how work and a bit more support. So I, you know, obviously your experience, it, wasn’t probably quite as rich as, as maybe it should have been, but I think certainly if we can get the principals around communicating better and really put the content behind it, I think there’s potentially a huge benefit to come from it.
Sophie Bailey:
Absolutely. There’s a risk that, that some of these stakeholders are still feeling like they had a different experience and actually if you can knit them together through some of the software available and bringing those communities together because I think there’s still some hesitance in, in some parts of the country about keeping other people that aren’t central to the school out of this physical school building. Yeah. So there are ways around that.
So yeah, in terms of navigating constant change, you know, it’s, it’s been hard and tiring as well as generating positive new processes and outcomes. Most of us seek comfort in the idea that we get a break from all the changes, but unfortunately that’s probably not the reality, there’s always change. So I wondered from the conversations you’re having with leaders you know, if, how they’re how far along they are on the idea of using agile processes, software tools to, to kind of skim the surface of all these changes rather than, you know, feel mired in the overwhelm of when change happens, I suppose.
Simon Freeman:
I think that’s a really, really interesting point. And I was I was talking to a leader the other day from a MAT down on the south coast and he beautifully articulated the potential upsides of moving to cloud technology. They’ve become a MAT that’s taken over a number of schools across coastal regions and therefore the need to be able to see how those schools are performing on a daily basis across quite remote geographies and the potential of technology to be able to do that is huge. And IRIS does play a key role in doing that, but the need to migrate a number of different schools onto new technology quite rapidly, that’s clearly a significant change program and a bit of a barrier. And I think it comes back to some of the things we talked about earlier, you know, making sure that you’ve got the right partners and making sure that you’ve kind of dipped your toe in a little bit and you’re confident that it can work.
Simon Freeman:
And then, and then ultimately being able to see the benefits that come from the back of it. But the path certainly what I’m seeing is that there is a huge desire to move to these agile processes and people can start to see the benefits and those benefits have been reinforced as we’ve gone through the pandemic and come out the other side and, and seen those different operating ways. But I think it’s also incumbent on an industry to make that as easy as possible and for, you know, organizations like Iris to de-risk some of those big change programs and to make sure that that’s done safely and it’s done successfully, and that those benefits of the technology do get realized.
Sophie Bailey:
And that’s quite interesting, isn’t it? Because I think previously, you know if we talk about sort of MIS platforms they’ve had this, you know, I, I guess if we talked about sort of pre and post a pandemic, but also how they’ve evolved is, you know, perhaps previously they were a bit more clunky and now it’s about making them modular, making the user feedback, something that you can involve into product development and that kind of thing.
Simon Freeman:
Absolutely. And I think you raised MIS there, which is really interesting. I mean, you know, 70% of schools have their MIS you know, locked under a desk somewhere, or, you know, in, in a cupboard. And, and there’s that incredibly rich information that is valuable around you know, attendance and performance and all that good stuff, which is, which is locked under a desk. And the technology exists now to be able to free that up and to inform educators and the leadership teams around much, much better decisions in real-time, which can dramatically improve outcomes for students. And I think that shift from you know, from that kind of on-premise and unlocking that information to the desk, into modern cloud tools and the benefits that can come from that is a huge potential. And that’s what we’re doing with that gen, which is our cloud MIS product and not, you know, I think we’re only starting to see the benefits that come from that, including the ability to run reports across multiple sites and to do that in real-time and to use the sort of modern tools that make life easier much, much easier for educators.
Sophie Bailey:
And then you mentioned the de-risking as well. And it got me thinking about the kind of skillset that’s required to navigate some of this information and to turn it into useful actions for schools as well. With IRIS, do you have any kind of either your own sort of training programs for leaders, or do you kind of recommend or recognize any that are already out there because partly this is about sort of you know, data analysis and, and that kind of clever use of information.
Simon Freeman:
And what we’re seeing is with all of that data at the moment, it gets manipulated in spreadsheets, or you have to crunch it together, or you pull this from one system to another, and the ability to host that information in the cloud, and then to be able to interrogate it in a, you know, easy to understand and quick way is crucial to being able to make those decisions. And we’ve invested heavily in our analytics platform called IRIS analytics, which pulls all of those bits of information together. And frankly, if you needed too much training on it, I think we would have failed because we want to try and make this as simple and as easy to use. And what we’re seeing is actually that we’re having to give less and less training to people now, because the tools are consumer-grade experience.
Simon Freeman:
You know, we have automated reports that you press a button and it runs the report and pulls all the information together and you’re then spending time focused on the decision you’re making rather than is this number correct. And is that number correct? And how do those two things play together? So obviously we do training if people want it, but we’re trying to make tools that are really, really intuitive to use. And that’s what we’re focused on at the moment and having the data available to be able to do that is obviously crucial.
Sophie Bailey:
And have you got any other examples of like multi-academy trusts or other independent schools that are doing a really effective job at using software or using technology in a way that begets all of those benefits that we talked about?
Simon Freeman:
I mean, we’ve got over 40 schools using the infrastructure that we’ve got in our new cloud platform. And for example I was speaking to a multi-academy trust leader who needed to pull together all the information to do their Ofsted reports quite recently. And it took them a couple of hours to pull it all together and put it in the right format and hand it over rather than the days it would have taken of, of kind of putting spreadsheets together and inputting information. So I think that’s been, yeah, that was hours that was given back to the school and clearly the, you know, the ability to provide that and, and put it forward has been really, really helpful for them, as well as things like submitting censuses and doing that sort of work. It was much, much easier with the kind of tools and technology that we’ve got available now.
Sophie Bailey:
And just generally speaking, because there’s been obviously this huge shift sort of this, this might, this might be some information that you’ve kind of taken on since joining, but I’m kind of keen to get an understanding of how IRIS’s pre pandemic education and use of technology, what that looked like, and now how things have evolved, what people are asking for that’s different, or perhaps, you know, just the, the interest in it is going to have gone up since the pandemic. So what’s the kind of major shift do you think has happened?
Simon Freeman:
I think there’s probably three big shifts about this. We touched on earlier, the fact that lots of information has been locked under the desk, you know, MIS systems, 70% of schools are, as I say, I’ve got their information locked under the desk. So that shift to cloud and the benefits that come from having the information available in any time to teachers on their apps or to senior leaders in sort of reports that will bring lots of schools together that shift to cloud, I think really, really important. And I think we’ve only started to scratch the surface if I’m honest of the potential benefits of that. And as we start to move to cloud, more and more of those benefits will manifest themselves. And that probably brings me on to the second benefit, which is around automation and being able to, you know, automation has the potential to be this potentially a scary, scary thing.
Simon Freeman:
And I don’t think it is at all. I think just freeing time up to allow teachers to be able to spend time doing what they’re there to do, which is teach students and not do the administration around reporting and attendance and, and grade marking lists. And to make that as easy as possible. We’ve got a lot of automation in our agenda a gen product, which allows teachers to be able to do that. And I think I read an Ofsted report recently that said 50% of teachers spend less than half their time actually in the classroom. And the other half is spent doing admin tasks. And I think we, we just see the technology available to be able to free up a huge amount of time there and be able to give that back to educators to do what it is they, they, they want to do.
I kind of blurred the last two actually, which was, which was around automation, which we’re, we have a lot of requests for. And then that final point, which really is about the, you know, the diversion of energy and making sure that you know, the focus is on teachers and that teachers can then put their energy back in into the places that they want to.
Sophie Bailey:
I completely subscribe to that idea of speaking at this thing on Friday. And I think that, you know, my advice would be that rather than seeing sort of computing and automation as this scary thing is just like, is that it can actually be quite boring, but useful. So, you know, choose a narrow task that is repetitive, that a computer can do better and put your creative you know, capabilities to something much more, much more impactful.
Simon Freeman:
I mean, just to give you a very sort of mundane example of that, I was talking to a MAT leader the other day and they processed nearly 30,000 invoices a month. I mean, it’s huge right. Invoices for everything that the group of schools buys and you know, they employ a couple of people to process that. And we have a tool called IRIS invoice matcher, which allows you to, you know, optically look at invoices and you know check them off against purchase orders on system, you know, that could save a couple of people’s time every month in order to be able to then focus on tasks that, let’s face it, are going to add a lot more value to the school day. And I think that point about automation about just picking some of those hugely repetitive non-value-added tasks automating them and giving that time back to you know, to people within schools. I think for me, that gets me out of bed. It’s really, you know, really the ability to change, change the school environment.
Sophie Bailey:
Yeah, definitely. And, you know, I think, I think in this age of, of lockdown and hopefully, we’re sort of out certainly in this setting slightly more out of that, but you know, everything can become quite task driven, which isn’t hugely satisfying for the human psyche. I don’t think so. You know, when, when it is just literally admin tasks. So yeah, I think anything that can, can relieve that and allow us to have those conversations come up with new creative ideas and implement them is, is great. You know, no one wants to ask to fill out more forms, do they?!
Simon Freeman:
No, they definitely don’t. And the more that we can use technology to speed that up we were demonstrating as mentioned that agenda to some teachers the other day. And one of them was filling out attendance tracking, and we were showing them how it was all done. And there was a kind of wow moment and went, wow, this is going to save me hours a month. And, you know, it’s that say not somebody who doesn’t work in the classroom, but who sees the benefit that modern tools can provide on the day. You know, I think that encourages all of us in IRIS to, to do more of this.
Sophie Bailey:
And when you’re having those conversations with leaders as well, are they, are they sort of signalling any major change in the school community and how perhaps that has become a bit more transparent with like we talked about earlier with parents now able to communicate that flow of information. I’m just wondering how, how they’re thinking about that and how technology may have a part in bringing all those stakeholders together a bit better by
Simon Freeman:
Yes. And actually we’re seeing it both ways both from governor’s boards and the, and the kind of things that get asked for of school boards and as well as the communication out to parents and to students themselves. And yeah, we touched earlier on I think because of the pandemic, the ability for parents at schools to engage much more easily with parents that you touched earlier on, on video parents evening we’ve recently launched our video parents evening manager as part of our high-risk reach communications tools. And we’re seeing huge interest in it because it means, you know, you can continue to communicate and in an environment that people are now more happy with in the in kind of a video environment, you don’t have to get into school, but obviously what flows with that is a lot more information around what your child has been doing.
Simon Freeman:
You know, what’s going on the curriculum, what things they’re succeeding at, what things they need help with. So definitely seeing an engagement more from that perspective. What we’ve also seen is the, the questions that are coming from, from governors as well, around how schools are performing, you know, where are our risks how are we getting on with the performance against our resources that we’re using? So if we’re putting this much money into this department and this much money into this department, you know, why we’re seeing attainment differences on the back of it. And actually as you start to pull that information together you start to, to be able to provide a much richer insight as to how best to use the limited resources that schools have. And I think that that ability of technology to bring all of the various stakeholders that make a school effective together yeah, that’s really powerful.
Sophie Bailey:
And as someone has sort of worked across lots of different sectors, and I’m a big believer that, you know, you th the sort of looking sideways to other areas of work can always help inform what you’re doing. Are there any kind of books, projects, you know, big thinkers that have influenced how you approach your work?
Simon Freeman:
Th there is actually, and I I’m quite a big fan of Satya Nadella, the guy that Chairs Microsoft. I read his book a little while ago actually, but he talks very much about bringing the soul back into Microsoft and Microsoft had become, you know, obviously a badmouth with its software and tools across the globe. And he talks very much about shifting back to why technology is important and how it can make the lives of people better. And he starts the book with a really heartfelt you know, reflection on his own background and his children and all the rest of it. And I really took that to heart because I’m a big believer in the fact that technology can be, you know, truly transformative for, for society and indeed for education, if we get it right. So yeah, I took quite a lot of inspiration from that and it was a theme that, that sits very well with me.
Sophie Bailey:
Amazing. And so that was his book. Okay, great. Yeah. I’ve just read the memoir of the CEO of PepsiCo who’s this woman and yeah, same thing. Like, you know, w we doesn’t matter where you end up, you always have your beginnings to draw on and it’s important to, well, Jenny from the blocks at that didn’t share anyway. Yeah. Well, it’s going to say, so where did, where, where were you born and what was your kind of sort of influence at a young age?
Simon Freeman:
Well, I am, I’m actually born in Shropshire in, in the UK. So I had a slightly idyllic, but rural background and I was always interested in technology breaking things, mending things, all that kind of stuff, which, which led me to be an engineer. So that was a big concern that, that engineering background, I think I take with me in my, in my working career. But it has led me to have a kind of interest in technology I have today. And I was fortunate enough early in my career to spend quite a bit time in India. And I actually worked out in India for a while. And you mentioned about mobile payments and one of the projects I was involved in that, that it was improving connectivity across rural India. And this was the late noughties when really the I guess the use of technology across mobile phones was really taking off and the need to have, not just a voice connection, but data connection.
Simon Freeman:
And I was there and part of the project we’re doing was installing mobile connectivity across India, and the, the transformation of people in rural India to be able to receive mobile payments from children and relatives across the globe. These are people who literacy wasn’t very high, probably didn’t own a bank account and were able to receive mobile payments. I mean, yeah, it probably was minor stuff to us in Western world and the technology we had, but it was transformative to the time I saw out there. And yeah, I think those experiences really shaped me and that’s probably why Satya Nadella’s book you know, really resonated with me that actually, you know, technology can be used to make some really impressive impressive changes to society.
Sophie Bailey:
Fantastic. Yeah. All the M-Pesa and micro payments and all that jazz. Brilliant. And I was interested actually, because obviously last year there was a huge influx in investment into ed tech. And I was sort of, I think IRIS’s financial or ownership structures properly, quite different to, to others. I didn’t know if you, if, if, if it being a private company, how that sort of changes its approach, if that’s relevant. Yeah.
Simon Freeman:
I think that your observation on the ed tech market is a really interesting one. And it’s it’s probably one of the exciting, most exciting technology markets that I’ve seen for quite a while. And if I look at, I guess, things that IRIS has been involved in and the things that others have been involved in, there’s a real mixture of some of these problems trying to be solved by some of the big tech players. So the Google classrooms, so Microsoft technology, Amazon as well. But there’s also a huge amount of brilliant startups. So people who’ve been in education and have been kind of in the classroom every day and go hang on, here’s a problem that I want to solve. And then solving it brilliantly. And that being then you know, growing and then being picked up by, by private businesses like IRIS and then being nurtured and grown further, and actually plugged together with some other tools.
Simon Freeman:
And we’ve seen a real consolidation in the sector as I think that’s gone on over the last certainly the last 24 months, but I think it’s been a bit of history for a while. And I think IRIS is really well positioned to be able to do that kind of stuff. You know, we’ve we have bought a number of businesses, but they’re businesses that complimentary to the ones that sit next to them. And we’re in a position now where through the IRIS product suite everything from engaging with parents to track your, managing your finances, to running the back office administration in your schools, to be able to run HR, to be able to run payroll, you know, we can provide all of that. And back to the things we talked about earlier, the ability to have a real insight and real understanding of what’s going on across the school and be able to make much better decisions. That’s the stuff that’s going to make huge difference, I think to the school, the future, and IRIS is really well positioned to be able to do that through the product suites that we bought. But we’re also, you know, we keep looking, we see some incredible innovations that come up in the education sector and yeah, we will keep looking and probably keep acquiring for the right things that we see. It’s
Sophie Bailey:
Probably a few startups listening in here,
Simon Freeman:
Please feel free to reach out. I’m more than happy to have a conversation with you. So,
Sophie Bailey:
Yeah. Yeah. and what you do is your customer base, your schools that you look after is that international as well?
Simon Freeman:
It is. So we cover just over 12,000 schools. The majority of which are in the UK. But as part of the IRIS family, we have a company called iSAMS who provide the management information systems for independent and international schools. And they’re doing a fantastic job in transforming some of the international schools with modern cloud-based payroll MIS systems and we’re seeing huge, huge growth and huge interest in in that product and some really, really positive customer feedback.
Sophie Bailey:
Fantastic. yeah, we have, we have listers in, in about 145 countries, so hopefully there’ll be listening into this.
Simon Freeman:
Well, if they want the most modern cloud-based MIS for their school, then feel free to reach out to myself or the Iris team.
Sophie Bailey:
And then I’ve got ahead. You know, one of the questions we always ask on our guests form is what’s the biggest myth or foe in education or technology you would like to see corrected.
Simon Freeman:
I think it’s a foe. And I think it’s that thing that we just took. We, we touched on earlier, which is the amount of information that gets generated in the school on a daily basis from the second that registration starts in the morning until the minute the lights go out. Yeah, this is huge passenger information. And school is big business. Being able to have that information at your hands and make sure it’s not locked under a desk in an old MIS software that isn’t isn’t cloud based and that data isn’t accessible, or if it is accessible, it’s not accessible in a, in an easy to consume format. For me, that is the foe that I would like I would like us to be able to have to overcome and other bits of, of, of, of government and public sector have overcome it. And I think education and education is the next place to do that. And that’s the mission IRIS is on, unlocking your data and making better decisions.
Sophie Bailey:
I mean, that is kind of sometimes quite breathtaking. I saw her on a an early survey that I think you’re involved in the 26% of respondents to these schools have a, have an online payment system. So that’s quite a lot that don’t. And it made me think because again, sort of school locally, you know, they, they were still using checks and then it got me thinking, well, you know, you’ve got now gen Z parents. So you know, I scraped the millennial bracket, but like the next generation below that gen Z, if they’ve had, if they’ve had children in that in their early twenties, you know, they are not going to be engaging with and and, and kind of that old school way of, of payments. So I think also for schools, this is part of governance as well. So making sure that some of these younger stakeholders that their way of engaging with the school and school community is reflected in terms of governance in terms of the tools that are used and that kind of thing.
Simon Freeman:
Yeah. And I mean, we’ve got an Irish, probably got 4 million families who are connected to us through the app. We transact probably nearly 15 million pounds every month on, on the payment processing, but you’re right. I mean, that’s quite a small proportion of the total schools that they use it. And we are very focused on trying to make that school and parent experience as consumer grade as possible because that’s what people expect and you know, it’s, time-saving, and it’s secure and it’s convenient and it means, and it’s, you know, it’s safe for the school to use. And I think that we very much see that as a as a huge area for the future, as I say, it’s it’s an area that we’re, we already sit in with our paramount and an IRIS which products but there’s definitely a lot, a lot more that can come from them.
Sophie Bailey:
So I’ll let you go in a minute. I’ve got a couple more questions. I think we’ve mostly done that one. So here’s the last one. Here’s the last one, then I’ll just do like a fun run at the end, but you’re responsible, especially for MATs and independent schools. And in terms of procurement, I was wondering whether, how you see the structure of multi-academy trusts and how that’s influencing just general procurement processes with, with schools. So how they buy and deliver some of their services, because obviously, you know, some listeners will be outside of those structures, but what, what’s the sort of general trend you’re getting into in terms of how schools go about thinking about procuring tech of any kind?
Simon Freeman:
It’s a really interesting question. And I think certainly as somebody who’s probably spanned the kind of public procurement in the past and seen if I’m really honest, quite risk averse decision-making, and I actually sometimes a race to the bottom. I becomes very much a price dependent procurement decision versus what I’m seeing now. And we’re seeing in the procurement approach from our academy trust, where it’s a much more rounded decision around what is the best value and not necessarily always measured in pricing, but actually what are the services we can derive? And actually, what are the onward benefits that the MAT can, can deliver from engaging with companies like Iris and the process that we’ve got? So if I’m honest, I see much more sophisticated decision-making and the freedoms that that MATs have around to making their own procurement decisions, right. They need to demonstrate value for money, including these demonstrate good corporate governance. But I think that can only be a good thing if the decisions are ones that are absolutely aligned to the needs of the leadership team and the best outcomes for the school. And certainly we see we see that more in a multi cademy tri-sector
Sophie Bailey:
And then off the back of that. So some PR I used to hear that, you know, schools will know, you know, if they’re doing one big procurement and they want it to do everything, and then now you’re hearing, okay, but they’re the good application of technology is like a particular task and making sure that it does that one thing really well. So what are you seeing from the, from the leaders that you speak to in terms of that balance between, you know, not continually making investment choices, because they want add on products and services, but then at the same time, making sure that the things that they invest in do individual tasks really well
Simon Freeman:
It’s it’s exactly the right question to be asked by, but by senior leaders. So how do I get the best point solution for this specific service, but at the same time, I don’t want to have to procure 50 individual services and put the onus on me on joining them all together. And certainly the conversations that I’ve been having my leaders is that Hey, Iris, you know, we want to see you investing in this technology. We want to see you demonstrate that you’re you know, you’re best in class of being able to deliver be it HR services or finance services or, or parent engagement. But we’d really like to just work with you as one contract, rather than having lots of different lots of different you know, the engagement with different organizations. And if I’m honest, that’s probably driven a huge part of our our growth strategy and our investment strategy is to make sure that we have got best in class products so that we can provide them across the, the needs that schools schools are facing. And and that we can demonstrate that to the market. And that obviously makes the procurement process and the, the management of partners much easier if you’re dealing with you know, one organization like IRIS rather than lots of individual ones and having to make all their products join up.
Sophie Bailey:
If you’re a school leader listening in, and you have an idea of what you want again, touch,
Simon Freeman:
We are all ears. And we would we’d love to know what are the challenges that you’re facing? What are the what, what are the things that are frustrating your school day? We hope we’ve got a solution for it at the moment, but if we haven’t, then we can work together on on solving it. We’d love to do that. And I think some of the best ideas we’ve had for our product sets has come from that really close engagement that we have with customers. You know, we have active user forums, we have active engagement and some of the, as I say, some of the best ideas have come from the feedback then that we definitely haven’t got all the answers. So if people want to put stuff forward, then we’d be absolutely love to hear about it.
Sophie Bailey:
Excellent. so final question. What do you like to do outside of education and technology to keep energized? So
Simon Freeman:
I run, but very slowly. I’m not a very, not a very fast runner. I’ve also
Sophie Bailey:
Got, is it flat or hilly where
Simon Freeman:
You live? It’s I live in Surrey, so it’s actually more Hills than I would like if I want it. So I’m definitely even slower up the Hills, but I have to run a bit. And we’ve got we’ve got just over one year, one year old, so I’m increasingly being involved in the world of soft play and, and things like that. So that’s been keeping me very busy over more recent weekends. Yeah.
Sophie Bailey:
Well, you and I, both here, we’ve got like a one and a half year old, so yeah, that was lots of fun during not,
Simon Freeman:
Yes, indeed, indeed. But it’s nice that things are opening up again, and we can get out into a bit more exploring and seeing family and doing that kind of stuff. So, yeah, that keeps me busy enough and I tend to take on the odd occasional building projects. But my DIY is not very good. So I probably shouldn’t, I probably shouldn’t put that on the, on the podcast.
Sophie Bailey:
Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. Awesome. Okay. Well, Simon, thank you so much for sharing what you’ve been up to and best of luck with the rest of your first year at IRIS education and having all those fantastic conversations out there and you know, putting that all back into what you’re developing and if anyone’s listening, do get in touch and yeah, the free, this is giving you those ideas about navigating constant change. So thanks again. And yeah, look forward to releasing this one.
Simon Freeman:
Wonderful. Thank you, Sophie. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for some very insightful questions and it’s been a pleasure to be here.
