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Schools are failing to teach kids about business, says entrepreneur Holly Tucker

Published 13:04 1 Nov 2019 GMT

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“I got a D”

This week’s guest on Pioneers With John Amaechi is Holly Tucker, who is the founder of Europe’s biggest small business site, Not On The High Street. With annual turnover north of £150 million and sellers adding nearly £600 million gross value to the UK economy, it’s no surprise that she was awarded an MBE for services to enterprise and is now a UK ambassador to creative small businesses. That is a pretty impressive resume – but you wouldn’t have known that if you looked at her exam results when she was a teenager. “I got a D,” Tucker admits when Amaechi asks her what grade she got in A-Level Business. And while Tucker definitely proved her teachers wrong, she is quick to express her dissatisfaction with how business is taught in schools at the moment. “It’s such a pity, and its one of the things I’m passionate about, the way we are educating,” she elaborates. “It didn’t inspire me enough.” “I would be given a textbook, and each class [the teacher] would write what was in the textbook on the whiteboard, and then we would repeat it into our books. And that was the way I was being taught business. I don’t learn that way.” Tucker continues to explain how she is trying to offer a new approach to the younger generation. “I wish I had learned in a way that I am teaching my son at the moment, where it’s all about his right side of the brain.” “He loves business, but we’re tackling it in a way that his brain can absorb it. So, we’re dealing with profit and loss, and cash flows at the moment, but we talk about it in a completely different way. I bring it to life, it’s real. And he’s just a sponge.” “One of my missions is bringing colour to the grey world of business.”