Opportunities are not evenly distributed.

Education comes in so many different variations; private and state schools or even home school. Major events affect each child’s ability to study differently, like health impact from COVID-19, the Cost of Living Crisis, school meals or the lack of it, building safety, and their personal circumstances. The “Class” divide, or regional divide where opportunities are not evenly distributed throughout the country. The inequality between the quality of education and the subsequent opportunities are huge between children from different backgrounds and environments. Clearly, growing up in an ever more complex world is tough for any child and their parents. I am a parent to young children and I want a world that is full of possibilities for everyone. We should take action to define the kind of world we want in 10 years’ time.

One day, while visiting a popular department store, I noticed the well-known game of Snakes and Ladders. Suddenly everything seems to click in my mind.

Let’s play Snakes and Ladders

The objective of the game is to move to your piece from the start to the goal point at the end. The dice dictate how many steps you move and there are snakes and ladders between the start and the end. Snakes pull you back and slow you down. Ladders enable your piece to climb and reach the goal faster. This is clearly a game that prepares children for life. Rolling dice is a game of chance like life. Snakes in general are negative and take our energy away, I won’t expand further because ultimately, snakes exist, not just in the wild, and will have to learn to deal with them accordingly. I am interested in the Ladders. Ladders are objects that just themselves are passive. We can use the Ladders to climb over obstacles and reach our goal quicker and let us see more. So I will create more metaphoric ladders in this board game of life. I want the world to be full of ladders that let kids dream big and achieve their aspirations.

Create Ladders to raise beyond King’s Scholarship level

I will be using Crowdfunding to create these metaphoric ladders. There are two purposes, firstly the aim is to raise funds in order to do something about the “educational difference”. Secondly, I want to engage experts so the crowdfunding can raise awareness that our world should be full of opportunities that kids from any background can grasp.

The King’s Scholarship winners become future prime ministers and likely other positions of significant authority so clearly achieving a high academic level may lead to a successful career (No comment on the “success” of recent Eton Prime Ministers). There are likely other factors, like connections, social background, wealth etc, which are out of most people’s controls. The academic level is more objective and the past examination papers showed where that level is. Step one is to understand that level and make the ladders to reach the KS level.

My plan is to answer the KS questions systematically with the experts that will help to identify the key ingredients for a really good answer. A kid who aspires to be a barrister would find how an actual barrister approaches the question interesting. A professional’s answer should be good. Two professionals’ can make the answer better and more complete. And adding another professional point of view should make it closer to the best answer. Crowdfunding will enable me to continuously improve the content and to inspire our youth to believe and achieve whatever their dreams are.

The main differentiator of my approach is to apply more unsupervised learning versus supervised learning. The experts and I will identify the key concepts (supervised learning) and let the kid “join the dots” to develop their own understanding (unsupervised learning). The approach in how the kid “join the dots” are explained in the earlier episodes. The intention is to bring out each child’s individuality. BEST believes curiosity, motivation, confidence and happiness are the priorities before examination results. I think one of the best parts of the approach is the direct real-life applicability. How would a Pro answer this question? Education can help children to find the thing that they like to do and contribute to society when they become adults.

Join me to build Ladders

In this game of Snakes and Ladders, there is a starting point today, an end point, doing the things that one is passionate about (as a job or hobby) and a checkpoint at King’s Scholarship at 13 years old. The Crowdfunding will build ladders from the present to King’s Scholarship level and from the King’s Scholarship level to the professional level. (The assumption here is that we want to be doing what we are passionate about which equals happiness.) Whatever a child’s interest or background is I hope that they can find a lot of ladders to support and pull themselves to the best version of themselves.

Please donate 2 pounds to confirm that education inequality is a problem and help me to do something about it.

Please donate 4 pounds to support and have a say on the matter. Subscribe to an email update so you can vote for the question to focus on and select 3 from a shortlist 5 experts to answer these questions.

The targeted audience are 13 year-olds, so the content needs to relateable and understandable.