AWARDS SUPPLEMENT
THE EDUCATION TODAY OUTSTANDING
CONTRIBUTION AWARD By Simon Hill, YPO
At the inaugural Education Today Awards held last month in London, SIMON HILL, Managing Director of education supplier YPO, picked up the top award for his outstanding contribution to the UK education sector. We were delighted to catch up with Simon recently to find out more about what the award means to him, and how he sees 2023 shaping up both for himself and the sector more generally.
What does winning this award mean to you? It means an enormous amount to me, both professionally but also personally. Education is, in many ways, my family business. My grandfather, father, mother, aunt, uncle and godfather were all teachers and there is therefore a proud tradition of “educators” in my family. I had a place to do teacher training after university but chose instead to tread my own path, entering manufacturing industry. Perhaps inevitably, the pull of the education sector was, however, too strong and towards the latter part of my career, I have entered it from a different perspective, providing the necessary resources to educate future generations. This sense of continuity is very important to me.
How did you get started in the education sector? After 20 years in manufacturing industry, I joined the Regional Development Agency for Yorkshire & Humber, supporting small business growth and promoting overseas trade and inward investment. On the closure of the RDAs following the 2010 General Election, the role at YPO became available. This seemed to me a perfect combination of my commercial experience and my experience in the public sector, spending public money in a transparent and accountable way, running a successful commercial business and providing maximum value for the public purse.
What would you say has been the key to your success? Although it sounds a bit of a cliché, I have always been very clear that no one ever achieves success on their own
and creating and building great teams has been a feature of my entire career. My first ever boss when I started work at Austin Rover in 1985 taught me that through his own behaviour. I am extremely proud of the fact that, in my last three jobs, when I moved on, one of my immediate team replaced me. I have therefore helped to develop my own successor three times.
What challenges do you see as most pressing for the sector to address?
As with all parts of the economy, the Education sector needs to reinvent itself for the new, post-Covid world, with new channels, new sets of behaviours, new expectations and constraints on funding. The rise of remote, on-line learning has been a particular feature of the last two years which many people are trying to get to grips with. This creates both a challenge but also a responsibility for organisations like YPO to support educators every step of the way on this difficult journey.
If you had to choose one, what has been your greatest achievement to date?
I would say successfully running an organisation like YPO through some challenging times and coming out the other side even stronger. There are very few examples of a successful commercial business which takes no public money, provides a valuable public service, makes a trading surplus and pays every penny back into the public purse - some of it directly to schools. Running such an organisation makes me very proud.
What’s next for you? Continuing to learn, develop myself and YPO and to reinvent ourselves so that we can continue to provide value. I’ve already had to learn a lot of new, unfamiliar skills in the last 3 years and, although it’s been tough, it’s also been rewarding. As the saying goes – “Every day’s a school day!”.
6 EDUCATION TODAY AWARDS SUPPLEMENT 2022
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