4iP Blog

Choosing a suitable school for your child is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. Should it be state or private, co-educational or single-sex? What are the academic standards like? Is there a discipline problem? Is the atmosphere a happy one? What do the kids think of the school dinners?

Schools have been inspected by Ofsted and reports produced for almost a decade. These reports are published online where they can be read by parents and the media. The form, however, is convenient only as a report archive, and not for the deeper goals of knowing. When you have pages of information how do you know what information is important?

This investment by 4iP in School Report Card addresses these problems. It will bring together multiple data sets to provide a newly accessible way of researching and comparing schools. This product will go beyond the idea of league tables to show schools in context and provide a meaningful interpretation of what they are really like - the atmosphere, internal organisation, teaching standards, facilities, discipline and much more.

Unlike the numerous books and school guides this product doesn’t just provide for parents researching new schools. School Report Card goes beyond selection providing existing school communities with the ability to take what they’ve found and act on it socially, whether that’s sending a link to a parent-teacher association or contacting a councillor. This product takes users from being informed about a system to having agency within the system. It will always provide a positive step next step that is localised and appropriate.

The team are making positive and friendly responses to school reports central to the product. School Report Card’s motto for the first public release is to celebrate the many great schools, making the data equivalent of school photos: a memento for every school’s performance.

So for the customary reasons why 4iP have invested. Firstly, and most importantly the team are incredibly talented. We care more about how smart you are than how old you are, and more about the quality of your ideas than whether you have a formal business plan. With Matt Jones (ex Dopplr) and Matt Webb (ex BBC) leading the business you know you can guarantee they’ll deliver something innovative and different. But talent attracts talent so as they ramp up I’m sure we’ll see distinguished designers and developers come on board.

Secondly, we know there is a user need and the opportunity is large. There are well over 7M parents of working age in Britain and we know that many parents care deeply about their kids’ education. We can see there’s a high demand for schools information with all the major newspapers and the BBC providing supplements or online products that surface the OFSTED data. But we have both qualitative and quantitative information that shows their needs are ill served online at present. We hope this product will be a first for giving schools data meaning and gives parents agency to affect change.

Finally, we know School Report Card will tackle this problem in a ‘4’ like way. The products will be fun, engaging and controversial; challenging the views people hold about schools and teachers and informing and opening the minds of parents.

See TechCrunch article

Get more information on the BERG blog