John (BSc, PGCE, MTA) earned a PGCE with Distinction on the Teach First Programme as a science teacher. He has thousands of hours of private tuition experience and wants to change the education world!

Biography:

Head of Education, Co-Founder, Get My Grades. (London, May 2016 - present).
John spends his time thinking about how best to educate people and using that to plan the best education learning platform and features. He writes content for Maths and the Sciences and reviews content our Subject Creators have written too.

Private Tutor/ Co-Director, Nichols Tuition (working with multiple agencies/ freelance work across London; September 2012 – present).
John has built up over 4000 hours of private tuition experience across numerous subjects, teaching students from Year 3 up to undergraduate level. Teaching students of widely differing abilities, John has implemented strategies for helping students to make rapid progress and achieve their required grades. More recently, he has run successful training days for tutors for multiple different agencies and delivered seminars for The Tutors’ Association. John's experience shows that the most important factor in student success is repeated practice and review and this has directly informed the structure of Get My Grades.

Member of The Tutors’ Association’s Continuing Professional Development Panel (October 2015 – present).
John is a member of the Tutors’ Association’s CPD Panel which meets to discuss ways of improving private tuition. This provides an insight into developments in the tuition industry, one of which is the development of technology in tuition. John also delivers seminars on the role of neuroscience in learning to members of The Tutor's Association.

Co-Director, Nichols Education Ltd. (London, September 2014 – August 2016).
John and Sam started a non-profit social enterprise to improve character education in schools. They collaborated with a team of teachers and psychotherapists to produce a Character Education curriculum and programme to run in schools. A pilot programme was run with a school in Lambeth. Whilst the scheme of work received a great deal of praise, unfortunately, the school’s delivery did not match up to their expectations. As a consequence, they took the decision to close the company and focus on developing Get My Grades. The curriculum they produced for Character Education, Wellbeing and Life Skills will be incorporated into Get My Grades later this academic year, which will be an additional unique selling point.

The Brilliant Club; Programme Director (London, April – August 2012).
The Brilliant Club is an award winning social enterprise that places PhD students into schools to widen access to the most selective universities. John was the first member of staff that the co-founders took on, helping them to expand from their pilot programme into around 30 schools. This entailed the design of educational programmes, recruiting and training PhD students and assisting with the running of events at universities. This gave John direct experience of working in a startup and of many of the legal and administrative aspects of growing a business.

Science Teacher, Teach First Programme (Aylesford School Sports College, September 2010 – March 2012).
John joined the Teach First Leadership Development Programme in 2010 and studied for a PGCE (which he qualified for with a Distinction) at the same time as training to become a newly qualified teacher. This gave him direct experience of the challenges facing teachers in schools which John looks back on and has taken into account when designing and creating Get My Grades.