About Scholar 6
We’re striving to make the highest quality independent education more affordable and better suited to a new generation of learners. We want to preserve superb face-to-face teaching but also to redesign schools as flexible networks of academic resources and recreational opportunities in an environment which fosters relationships, resilience and independence. Close pastoral support and the vision of teachers as mentors as well as sources of knowledge underpins the Scholar 6 experience.
Scholar 6 is about much more than technology. It’s about re-imagining 21st century schools to be as productive, interesting and happy as they can be.
Joe Francis, Founding Director
Our Plan
Scholar 6 will launch its first college in London in September 2021, followed by three additional colleges within the capital before expanding into other major UK cities.
We are currently developing Brillder™ content so that the first school goes live with our technology already in place.
Our People
The Scholar 6 team brings together teachers and technologists from leading independent and state schools, as well as figures from industry, academia, sport and the arts. The vision we propose is balanced, creative and authoritative – now is the moment when we want to make it real.
Though still in his thirties, Mark Wang is an inspirational figure in international education and an accomplished businessman. A fluent speaker of both English and Norwegian, he studied at the United World College in Norway (UWC Red Cross Nordic) and subsequently at the University of Oslo. He is the founder of the UWC college at Changshu. He was selected as a carrier in the Olympic torch relay and has been the subject of a TV series and even an opera.
A life-changing air accident in 1993 resulted in the loss of both his legs and a serious spinal injury which hospitalised him for five years. Far from being crushed by this experience, it forged Mark’s amazing resilience and zest. He won 2 gold medals at the 36th Disabled Ski Championship (1999) and wrote a multi-million selling autobiography, Hold Up the Blue Sky of Life (translation from the Mandarin title).
Previously a senior master at Eton College, Joe Francis is the founding director of Scholar 6. He was educated at the Royal Grammar School Guildford and St Catherine’s College Oxford where he took a First. Joe gained experience of US and Italian university and corporate environments before returning to the UK in 1994 to teach first at Tonbridge School then at Eton where he was Head of English until 2010. In 2011 he had the opportunity to spend a sabbatical year as Headmaster of Hampton Court House, gaining a radically different form of management experience in a West London day school. Returning to Eton, he took charge of Sixth Form Select, the elite academic prefects who deliver the School’s celebrated Speeches programme. In 2016 Joe was elected by his fellow masters as Chair of the Common Room (negotiating pay and working conditions).
Joe has made an extensive study of funding, fees and the rising costs which affect education in the UK. He has also been inspired by Eton’s new Centre for Innovation and Research in Learning and worked in consultation with the Christiansen Institute and some of the UK’s top teachers to develop the Brillder concept and pedagogy.
Joe is married to Catherine, a cardiologist at the Royal Brompton Hospital. He has three children.
From January 2020 he will be Executive Principal at Stoke College, the school near Cambridge where some elements of Brillder technology will contribute to a new international sixth form.
Andy Rothery brings immense experience in commerce and property to the Scholar 6 team. He is a fellow of both the Institute of Chartered Accountants and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
After studying PPE at Oxford, Andy joined Deloitte in 1988 where he had a long and distinguished career, eventually becoming a senior partner and leading Deloitte Real Estate. His extensive business experience includes handling large scale mergers and acquisitions and purchasing major assets on behalf of global investors.
Andy is a trustee of the London Transport Museum and also chairs the Florence Trust, a London-based contemporary arts foundation. Following his retirement from Deloitte in 2015, he became Chair of the Governing Board of the Leathersellers’ Federation of Schools in his native south London, an experience which is turning his mind increasingly to the challenges of modern education. The beneficiary of a full scholarship to Colfe’s School himself, he has a particular interest in promoting social mobility for young people.
Andy has four children and a grandson and lives in New Cross.
Lindsay Macvean is the youngest member of the Board but brings by far the greatest tech know-how and experience. He attended Lord Wandsworth’s College before going up to the University of Nottingham to read Philosophy. Like all the best tech entrepreneurs he never finished his degree, but dropped out to launch his first tech business, building websites.
In Ireland, an encounter with Bill Liao in 2011 led to Lindsay’s involvement in the foundation of CoderDojo, the non-profit phenomenon which teaches children to code worldwide. Lindsay has also acquired extensive knowledge of open resource education platforms such as the Khan Academy.
Currently the Analytics Product Lead for Invotra, a significant supplier of software to the UK Government, Lindsay has worked on the delivery of commercial software for over 10 years, in every aspect from Product Development, to Quality Assurance, System Administration and Account Management. His adventures in America, from building Face Recognition software in Nevada to winning Hackathons in Silicon Valley, will hopefully, one day, be narrated in one of his You Tube lectures.
Lindsay regularly flies back and forth to Ireland to see Amelia and Pearl.
Investment Opportunity
If you are interested in investing in Scholar6, contact us with your details and we will be in touch when our next round of funding commences.
Scholar 6 will be the first sixth form to integrate its own ‘blended’ learning technology on a truly cross-curricular scale. It will be the model to demonstrate how teaching and learning can use technology to become both more effective and more cost-efficient.