EDUCATION TODAY AWARDS 2025
THE EDUCATION TODAY OUTSTANDING
CONTRIBUTION AWARD AL KINGSLEY MBE, CEO of NetSupport
Last month’s Awards ceremony saw AL KINGSLEY MBE, CEO of NetSupport, take home the Outstanding Contribution Award. Following his win, we spoke with Al to discuss his career, his insights on EdTech, safeguarding, and governance, and his plans for what’s next.
Congratulations on receiving the Outstanding Contribution Award! Looking back over your career, what does this recognition mean to you?
Thank you! So, I’ve spent over 30 years in the space, trying to do the right things, building communities and supporting others. It’s lovely to talk about all the amazing things happening in our schools and with different vendors within the education space, but it’s very nice when your peers recognise your efforts over a sustained period. So, whilst I always find it awkward to talk about what it means specifically to me in the bigger context (because there are so many other fab people it could be!), it’s just a lovely validation from people whose opinions really matter to me..
You started your career in financial services – what was it that first drew you to the education sector? I joined Barclays Bank because my parents told me it would be a good job, but I very quickly realised that in the banking sector, you couldn’t innovate and have new ideas, because they were not looking to change the way they had worked for decades. So, I transferred to the commercial sector for a couple of years, where new technologies were coming in – and I came to realise that technology appealed to me more than finance. Naturally, with that interest in new technology, and having two young
children, education became an area where I felt there was more of an opportunity to make a difference and it was an area I increasingly became more passionate about being involved in. So it’s been a long journey! Like many of us, it starts with family, and, for me, it also started with moving house to a new location where, conveniently, the very first school in that area was being built, and this presented an opportunity to get involved at the ground level and help support its growth..
Can you tell us more about your work at NetSupport? NetSupport has been operating for 35 years. We have an amazing team, and, like every good team, the first rule is: employ people that are better than you at all the different jobs you need! We have a great team who get on and do the work, which enables me to be more creative in some of the things that I do.
NetSupport is the trusted voice for classroom instruction technology, online safety, IT management, but more importantly, we’re just there to make sure – quietly, behind the scenes – that the systems and tools used in schools do their jobs as effectively as possible. I could get excited that we’ve got nearly 25 million users around the world, but actually, it’s more exciting that we’re still here, we’re still going, and people trust us for what we do.
When it comes to digital safeguarding, how has the nature of online risk evolved, and what new threats should schools be preparing for today?
I need to be honest and wave a big flag here to signal a declaration of interest, by the nature of what we’ve developed over many years at NetSupport. Wearing my education hat, however, I can see things from a different standpoint – and I think that combination of perspectives is ]fairly unique.
The biggest safeguarding risk that we face right now is really about all
of us (children and parents) not understanding the digital world; namely, the considerations around efficacy, data bias, where our data goes, data footprints, our digital privacy, etc. This is especially important now that AI is here and in the context of a curriculum where digital citizenship continues to fall short. With the recent requirement in the 2025 Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) guidance that obliges schools to know what AI tools and platforms children are engaging with, the next step is to have secure, robust and trusted technology tools that are co-produced with teachers which provide those insights into all the places, conversations and topics that could place them in harm’s way. At the same time, that technology also needs to provide the information securely to safeguarding staff, so they can determine what should happen next. Those are the kinds of decisions that humans, not tech solutions, need to make.
You’ve served as a school governor for 15 years now. What are the most significant governance challenges schools face today – and what can boards do to tackle them? There are three key challenges right now. The first is: how do we build capacity in our system? There is simply too much pressure on schools and staff in terms of the expectation and remit of the role, which is now way beyond that of teaching and learning. That is amplified by the next challenge, which is that there is inadequate funding to deliver a high- quality service. The third huge challenge is that in our endeavour to find a scalable one-size-fits-all education system, we are actually providing a format that doesn’t bring out the best in 30% of young people who need a different way of engaging in learning to reach their potential. It’s the same scenario with assessment.
Looking ahead, what do you see as the single biggest opportunity – and biggest risk – facing the sector in the next five to 10 years? The single biggest and most impactful opportunity would be to innovate within the curriculum to elevate skills – making them measurable and awardable in the same way as we reward accumulation of knowledge on subjects and content.
The biggest risk is a continuing lack of agency for some of our learners, along with them generally not seeing the value and purpose of traditional education, versus acquiring micro skills and practical qualifications in different pathways in the future. It’s about ensuring that we keep the education system relevant for the workplaces of 2030 and 2040, rather than looking backwards to emulate the ones of the last century.
Are there any new projects in the pipeline you can tell us about? I’m not good at saying ‘no’, so there are lots of projects on the go! A really exciting one is that I’ll be chairing the advisory board of the brand-new ‘Institute of AI Education’ being launched next February and supported by St John’s University in York. It’s a pioneering initiative dedicated to advancing AI literacy and innovation in schools, safely and built on evidence.
Then, wearing my other hat, at Hampton Academies Trust we are building a new school which will be opening in a year’s time. Alongside that, we are hoping that we’ll be given the go-ahead to build another secondary school for 2028 as well. As for the continued journey with the NetSupport team, we will continue to co-produce and respond to the challenges facing the education sector, and do so in a measured and sustainable way. P.S. Reach out if you’ve got any good ideas!
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