The British Blacktrepreneur Podcast
Welcome to 'The British Blacktrepreneur' My name is Jason Lazarus
This podcast aims to promote black businesses, in the UK, educate entrepreneurs on all things business, and inspire you on your entrepreneurial journey. Growing up, business was just foreign to me, I knew nothing about it, I was taught that being a consumer and working a job was the only way to really succeed in life. My West African would preach ‘Education, Education, Education’ which I hated at the time but have grown to appreciate how invaluable knowledge is. My goal is to curate conversations with Black Entrepreneurs in the UK to find what their ‘WHY’ is. Furthermore, I’m on a mission to get black entrepreneurs podcasting! I’ll be dropping in my expertise about podcasting whilst bringing on inspiring guests to keep you going on your entrepreneurial journey.
The British Blacktrepreneur Podcast
The Journey to Educational Empowerment with Ziggy Moore
Have you ever pondered the transformational power of education and its impact on our communities? Get ready to unravel this fascinating theme with our esteemed guest, Ziggy Moore, founder of 'Moore Education'. Ziggy, with a rich experience of 17 years under his belt, steers this enlightening conversation around the role of education in transforming lives. He shares his personal journey, starting from his Caribbean roots to his experience at a black school, and how these have shaped his perspective toward education.
Our conversation takes a deep dive into the African Caribbean community's educational attainment and the challenging narratives around it. Ziggy passionately addresses how education is not merely confined to formal schooling or degrees. Instead, it extends to self-education, a crucial factor in the success stories of many in entertainment and entrepreneurship. We further delve into the vital role of black teachers and the importance of an inclusive and supportive education system for the black community.
We conclude with an inspiring discussion on Ziggy's venture, More Education, aimed at bridging the educational gap in the African Caribbean community. Ziggy shares how he harnessed the power of technology to expand his reach and impact, and the role of strategic marketing in this journey. We highlight More Education's initiatives such as their Essential Guide to Secondary School and their presence on various social media platforms. These initiatives underline the importance of supporting all children in their educational journey, emphasizing the crucial role of education in personal and community advancement. Get ready to be inspired and motivated to value education as a transformative tool.
Welcome to the British Black Entrepreneur. This podcast exists to promote black businesses in the UK, to educate black entrepreneurs on all things business and to inspire you on your entrepreneurial journey. Here is your host, Jason Lazarus.
Speaker 1:Okay, folks, I hope everyone is well. Welcome back to another episode of the British Black Entrepreneur podcast theme to promote, educate and inspire you on your entrepreneurial journey. I was just speaking with Ziggy Moore. Ziggy is a founder and owner of More Education, a prominent online interactive tuition service based in the UK With a history of seven years in operation. Ziggy boasts over 17 years of experience in the field of education, ranging from the role as a teaching assistant to senior management, and he's also dived into the world of consultancy education. Yeah, great to see you today. Fantastic, fantastic conversation. We kind of spoke about the field of education, black people's relationship to education, his experience growing up in a Caribbean household and how that related to his education. It's been great looking at him online. So if you are a parent of a child in a secondary school, a Asian man he runs a tuition service.
Speaker 1:Yeah, more Education is doing good things and we want more of that in our world. So I hope you enjoy today's convo. Just a quick apology my mic had a bit of an issue, so there might be some fuzzing on my part with regard to when you're hearing me, but hopefully that shouldn't take away from the value that you get and the conversation that we had. So here he is without further ado. It's Ziggy Moore. Thank you for joining me on the show. I really do appreciate your time today. I'm looking forward to a fantastic exchange of ideas and also to get your knowledge of what you've been doing with More Education and beyond. So firstly, what I want to know is to your origin story, kind of where you're from, what life was like for you growing up and what your educational experiences, maybe in primary, secondary school were like for you, brilliant, okay.
Speaker 2:So yes, my name is Ziggy Moore, owner and founder of More Education. Background story is interesting. So I had a I wouldn't say yeah. I had a turbulent time at primary school. So I never say I was expelled. I think there was just a discussion between my mom and a headmaster saying this clearly isn't working. You need to find an alternative. I was lucky in that in regard because my older brother was highly regarded at school so he was like very academic captain of the football team, really loved around the school, and then his younger brother came kind of bumbling in who was a bit more rough and tumbling hands on. So because my brother had kind of set a positive precedent, they didn't kick me out, but that's really where it was at for me. I struggled in primary school not because I was an academic.
Speaker 2:but simply we found out later that it was dyslexia and we later found out that I was on the autistic spectrum.
Speaker 1:But when I was a kid.
Speaker 2:I'm talking about 88, 89, 90, and I'm in primary school. Those things weren't as prevalent in conversations, educational circles, as they are now so the conversation because I used to get in a lot.
Speaker 2:I did get in a lot of troubles, a lot of fights, a lot of scraps. The conversation between my parents was send him to Jamaica, which is where my parents are from my cousins are in Jamaica like that was standard to send kids back those days or find an alternative school. Now my mom found an independent black school predominantly black, I should say a seven day adventure school called John Loughborough, which is in North London, tottenham. People may have heard of it and I was sent there and, to be honest, that environment saved my, my life, had I not have been nurtured in that way where I actually discovered okay, I am, I am quite smart. I just need to be nurtured and taught in a certain way. And that was conducive to my type of learning. That reflected the messages that I had at home and the I'm gonna say the messages how I would understand and be taught at home was reflected at school. So there wasn't a disconnect which I think happens to a lot of children. So yeah that.
Speaker 2:That was. That's my origin story. It could have, I think, been a lot worse had I not had parents who, and particularly my mom, who was very, very active and aware of the pitfalls of the education system back then. So we're talking early to mid nineties. I'm showing my age now, so I generally class myself as very, very fortunate to have had a mom who's really who had a finger on a pulse.
Speaker 1:Okay, excellent, now that's good. And how did your own educational journey shape your perspective on learning and its value?
Speaker 2:See again. Interesting. Most of my teachers came from the Caribbean and I was also fortunate enough where my grandparents and my cousins were in the Caribbean. So I would visit quite often, like most summers. That's where I was sent out. So things that would stick out to me were we would have a ranking system at our school. So at the end of the year this was reflected in the Caribbean as well, with my cousins. So at the end of the year they would rank you based on where you came in the class first, second, third, fourth, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:So there was that real competitive edge.
Speaker 2:So I knew, because I was competitive, I had to be in top five. Then I think what would it take for me to be top five Now if I'm going to Jamaica this summer and I know my cousins are also going to be ranked in their class and the conversation is going to be like where did you place? That's the first thing. So there was a competitive edge. Secondly, my teachers reinforced consistently the importance of education, like education was something of huge value in my family, in the school, among my teachers, they weren't just there for a paycheck or kind of see out the hours of the day or to pay for the next holiday. That isn't what it was. It was. We are devoted to ensuring the betterment of these children through the avenue of education and that was that was clear. And I'm 30 years on, where I see a lot of my teachers and something that is clear they were devoted. They genuinely believed that education was the key to transforming lives and I would say that's probably the biggest kind of nugget that I took from school.
Speaker 1:Could you possibly elaborate on the unique challenges and opportunities within the education space as it pertains to the black community?
Speaker 2:I think even just kind of charting my journey and you've kind of heard me refer to, coming from a Caribbean or African Caribbean background, the values that are placed on education. I was as well as going to and I've said this previously before in different iterations I also went to like a Saturday school, claudia Jones, which is in North London, and if you know anything about Claudia Jones, you know about her, her work and passion in the community. So it was something where over the summer, the summers that I didn't, I wasn't shipped away to Jamaica, I would, I would be here, and it wasn't just like a play center, it was you would do in the morning you do English, maths and science and in the afternoon you do activities. So in that space, education for black my parents generation, I'd say before, was fundamental, really, really was fundamental in in part of you growing up. I would say now that kind of argument is is somewhat challenged. It's challenged. We are seeing.
Speaker 2:I think we're kind of the argument is being skewed because even when we look at a lot of people who are successful in different spaces possibly the entertainment space and so on and so forth, the entrepreneurial space also I often find that education is sometimes kind of pushed to the side, but when you actually speak to these people and you actually know their backgrounds, they come from educational backgrounds or or or they've had to re educate themselves in the field that they're in to be successful.
Speaker 2:So, although they may not have attained educational qualifications as such, so they might have gone on to get a degree, a master's and so on and so forth. Whatever field they're in, entrepreneurial, they've had to educate themselves in order to be successful. And I sometimes worry a bit about the message currently in the African Caribbean communities specific that are being told about education. I often worry about the messages I listen to some of the responses from the parents that we have. I look at the educational outcomes of our children, which are specifically reflected in African Caribbean children, specifically boys. They're very poor outcomes and I think a lot of that comes from the messaging.
Speaker 1:You know what ways can the education space be more inclusive and supportive of the needs and aspirations of the black community.
Speaker 2:So it's an interesting question. The reason why it's an interesting question I fully appreciate. I come from. I come from a very different slump. I come from, like, the business I have is is an independent business. So, for example, a lot of people have asked me why am I not like a charity or a CIC? Why do I not apply for government funding or funding from other places to do what I need to do? And it's because I am of the belief that I provide a quality service that's needed by the community.
Speaker 2:All of the statistics show that this is something that is needed by the community and the statistics also show that when a black child is taught by a black teacher, it has an impact on educational attainment. Don't quote me, but if you have a black teacher in primary school, one in secondary school, the likelihood of you going to university increases by like 20% or something like that 20 to 25% I can't give the exact quote, but quote from America. And there is an impact of being educated and we've seen it at more education, being educated by people who look like you, who understand you, so on and so forth. So when I I'm from the perspective that, as a community, it's it's it's kind of on us, for us to make the strives and make the impact that that's missing by government or other organizations. It's. It's on us to make those strives because we've we've done it previously.
Speaker 2:It's something that, when we came to this country when you look at the likes of Bernie I quote from all the time how the West Indian child has made educationally subnormal and the start of Saturday schools that's what we did. You saw, ok, my children aren't being aren't being educated in a certain way. What are we going to do about as a community? We're going to come together now and at that time, in 1972, we didn't look like, oh my gosh, government, like what are you going to do for us? Because, no, we did for self, if that makes sense, and that's the model that I operate by Like we will continue to do for self, because looking towards government agencies and it doesn't matter about, maybe, the country you're in or so on and so forth it's about us trying to do for self as best as we can, because we're the only solution to any issues. We know the solutions and we're best placed to deal with those. Deal with those issues.
Speaker 1:What prompted you to start more education? Were there things that you saw that you would make you think I need to set up something for my own people, my own community? What was the driving factor behind your business?
Speaker 2:I've said this, I've said this a lot and I'll always I'll always put it down to one student I wasn't on this teaching. I've always had a had a love of property, yeah, and I always wanted to go on and be a successful millionaire property developer and drive around in a Range Rover and so on and so on and so forth. That's the image I had anywhere after watching Channel 4.
Speaker 1:All of the channel for property stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I was going to go on. A day I had a student who I went to a school when I was there for a short period of time and taught English and I had a significant impact in that school, as I've done and quite quickly she said do you do tuition?
Speaker 2:I was like I ain't got time for that, and she begged. She's like please, like, if you don't do it, then I'm not going to pass. I thought, ok, cool, find one or two of your friends and I'll do it as a group as opposed to doing it as a one to one, because I understood the concept of leveraging and that's how it kind of started. But what I'd always seen that black children needed support. But I think I was ignorant to believe that. Oh well, my mom sorted me out. You know what I mean. So everybody else's parents are going to sort them out.
Speaker 2:That was extremely naive Spoil. To some extent I was spoiled and ignorant. And I realized that not only just the service of the tuition service, but the information, the information a lot of parents aren't privy to. Hence why and we can speak about it later I've launched an ebook. I do weekly lives, I always make myself available in the DMs, I do a lot of stuff to kind of provide information. Because I thought, as some people do, everybody's kind of like me. No, they're not. And having spent time in the education system, I kind of looked around and said, ok, I really need to make sure that this is happening, because there are huge gaps.
Speaker 1:Can you kind of provide like? An overview of some of the initiatives and programs that you offer a more education and how you address some of the educational challenges that your pupils or students face.
Speaker 2:So what we do? So, if we look at some of the services, so the consultation service alone. So we offer a consultation service for parents where we look at maths and English a lot of parents.
Speaker 2:I did something on my Instagram recently. I said at what point, if you have a car, at what point do you take it for a service? Do you take it for a service annually, or every 10,000 miles after you break down or when you start hearing some knocking coming from the bonnet? And the majority of people said you take it every year, so you need to maintain that car.
Speaker 2:Educationally, we need to be very clear on where our children are at, and that doesn't happen in the way that we would assume. So sometimes you have to wait till parents evening. Sometimes it can be. Often it can be very difficult to have real conversations with teachers. Teachers are very busy, so you as a parent have to be on top. So what we do is we offer a service where we do a diagnostic assessment in English and maths and then I break down where your child is at and have a conversation with you. That only costs £47. Yeah, I would advise every single parent to do that, not because I'm going to be a millionaire off of a £47 fee, but simply because, if you know you need to be aware of what's happening with your car, I think you also need to be aware of what's happening with your child educationally, because it also reveals a lot of things as well anxieties around specific subjects and a lot of time. It doesn't necessarily lead to me recommending you to join more education. It could be a range of different things that, just as a parent, you need to be aware of. So that's one of the services we offer. The other service we offer is the online tuition, where, in essence, we will go alongside your child in a school year and they'll come to us four hours a week. It's all online maths and English and they're taught by our teachers simultaneously. That is the consistency that children need. Especially.
Speaker 2:People think that, oh, it's over. This whole COVID-19 thing is over and the impact it isn't. Because you've got to think of it like this. Our children who are in year 10 now are those children who didn't do SATs and didn't finish their primary school and then didn't have a proper year seven. I want you to go back to your first day in year seven and think about how pivotal that was and that first term or two terms in integrating you into secondary school life. Imagine if you didn't have that. Imagine the ongoing impact that would have on your educational journey. Usually, what happens is, in year six the teachers will plug certain gaps and prepare you for secondary school. We have children now in year 10 who are preparing for GCSEs who have huge gaps.
Speaker 2:If we're going to go back even further, I know children that were born during that period of time and I remember speaking to a doctor friend of mine who was no, that's a speech and language therapist who was saying the development of speech for the children in a certain age who were born during that time is a little bit delayed because a lot of people were wearing masks and they weren't able to pick up on patterns of speech and how to form words because they just didn't see because everybody was wearing a mask those children will have. Unless something is done by the parents who are proactive, then they're consistently going to see the impact of that. So that's why I try to speak about the message of having educational intervention. Whatever it looks like it might be, us at more education it might be.
Speaker 2:Another provider is almost kind of standard now and should be standard, and if it's not just be aware, like a car, if you're not servicing, getting the MOT done every year at some point, you're probably going to run into a problem. So you want to be proactive as opposed to reactive. So just to kind of touch on a point we offer. What do we offer? We offer consultations. We offer online courses, so we do specific ones, just GCSE. They're downloadable courses. We offer a range of resources to inform and support parents.
Speaker 1:With regards to just going back to when you were building your business and you started off with leveraging with three pupils, what was the process like of getting the pupils and also getting the teachers? How were you able to Simultaneously do that?
Speaker 2:I wasn't it was crazy started off with, I think, your four students for the first month January 20 2016 we're actually in a community center, so like a small room and within the first month, two of those students left, so I was left with two pupils one whose parent to this day has never paid, which is, which is often less so now, so it wasn't making any money. Eventually we I was kind of those times I had no idea about marketing. I was a teacher, no clue about marketing or Positioning and all that kind of stuff, and it was very much in the community. Where the business really changed was during COVID and when we went online. Once we went online which we still are to this day which gives us it gives us huge capacity. It means that I'm not restricted to teachers who can Are in my local area. So a lot of our teachers, most of our teachers are actually based in Jamaica, because we have a very, very high standard of education out there. Once we're able to kind of merge the curriculum and get them to understand that, their delivery is brilliant, because I find they're just better Online teachers, whereas teaching the UK, to be honest with you, was never part of our plan. We weren't taught how to do all these online tricks and how to work zoom. It was only during the pandemic and we were behind Whereas they were ahead and we're seeing the impact. So now we well at the end with just coming up to start in our new term.
Speaker 2:The end of last year we had 60 plus student, 10 teachers, six classes all running four days a week, some Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, rain there is. Previously we only did GCSE, we now range from sats. So that's the year six as a transition all the way up to GCSE. We just got our GCSE results in another great year 100% pass in English language, 100% pass in English literature, 89% pass in maps. So we're looking at Kind of those are the, those are the past rates of like a private school. So in essence, you're you're getting a private school service educationally for 12 pounds an hour now, I know one of the challenges that you had historically was marketing.
Speaker 1:You mentioned it there briefly.
Speaker 2:How did you?
Speaker 1:acquire the marketing skills that enabled you to make more education what it is today.
Speaker 2:If I'm gonna be stone cold, honest, I was fortunate enough, through my network, to work with An amazing marketing company that's slipped my mind currently that works Specifically with black brands. So they really liked what we were doing. They kind of work more so on the e-commerce side. So there's a lot of black brands that you may see quite a lot on the On, instagram and so on and so forth and they power, they're behind, they're behind them and they worked with me really helped me to kind of gain and understand that could have to kind of invest in that Side and how the game works. So a lot of our ads where you may have seen a lot of stuff on Instagram, which is a brilliant place to begin to market Really it's them. So it's just through my network and working with translate culture great guy called Maz. He's become a good friend of mine. He believed in what we did and kind of mentored me and showed me a lot, oh, about marketing and positioning, because I didn't have a clue.
Speaker 1:So yeah, the kindness of working with some great people in regards to black education and seeing black boys, black girls become educated. How do you feel that come close, sort of the wealth gap between those children that you see maybe in the inner cities or not to say that all black children are impoverished, but how do we close that gap and do you see your service as a wealth gap closer? That makes sense 100%.
Speaker 2:Initially, if I'm going to be honest, I didn't see that as oh yeah, let's get them some qualifications because that's really good. But the more I began to actually study and understand the business and what we're really trying to achieve, so, if we move from 2016 to 2023, so even now we offer an internship program so where we're able to get our year 11's corporate internships over the summer, we're able to get them into companies, city companies, and they're working for four to six weeks. Because what we realize is, on top of the qualifications, education is the biggest wealth, what I close as the wealth gap people with degrees versus people without degrees. I've said it loads of times. It's a 10 grand, usually a 10 grand difference in regards to their wage over over 40 year career. That's 400k. Yeah, nearly half a million pounds. Yeah, if you're leaving that on the table. Yeah, if we're leaving that on the table, let's think about three, two children. Yeah, if you have two, just nearly a million pounds that's left on the table. We don't think about it like that. That's, let's say, for example, two houses. Yeah, let's not look at the compounding. Let's not look at compounding. Let's not look at how that would grow. Yeah, we're leaving so much money on the table by not focusing and ensuring that our children are educated, and in specific fields.
Speaker 2:So we look at other cultures and we see they really focus on that. So, in regards to educational attainment, I need to be specific here. So it's Indian. It's Indian children yeah, can't remember, because it's divided and children of China are some of the highest attaining academic, academically. If you break it down into ethnic groups and when you look at and reflect it in regards to wealth, median wealth, income for households, again that's where they sit. That's where they sit. Yeah, that's where they sit. They're some of the highest in regards to median wealth. And when you break it down ethnically, indians sit at the top. And it's interesting because it's not just in the UK, it's also in America as well. We know this. They focus on education.
Speaker 2:You're going to be a doctor, you're going to be a. This, you're going to be a, that you're going to do. Very much is something that's set out. So it all depends on the outcomes that you want to achieve. If we're complaining that we're not achieving certain outcomes and wealth, and so on and so forth, a lot of it comes down to the educational attainment and aspirations of your children. Hence why what I've tried to do is put almost a no brainer proposition towards you Give me your child, commit to the process and I will make sure that they get the grades to go on to the next stage of education. We'll also provide them with opportunities and mentors and guidance to go beyond that, because sometimes going on to A levels and the other first person in your family can be quite daunting.
Speaker 2:Go into degree in the first person. I give an example Interesting. The same young lady in 2016 came to me and said she needs help, so on and so forth. I sent her a job offer today based on a conversation. So it was a conversation. Somebody said I know her degree is. I know what she does. And somebody said oh yeah, I'm going to be starting. I'm going to be working on a new team here. Don't have any staff. Do you know anybody? I'm going to be. Yep, I know somebody.
Speaker 2:I sent it to her because, this is just how it works 80% of jobs are never advertised, are never, ever advertised. It's about who you know who you've and how you've positioned yourself. If we're not, as a community, focusing on certain key things education being a staple and positioning ourselves in a certain way when it comes to educational attainment, what our steps are for our children, we cannot complain when we're not in the conversation about certain things.
Speaker 1:Ziggy, thank you so much for today. Just before you go, if people want to find out more about more education, what you do, if they're a child that's in secondary, that's struggling or needs help, where can they go to find your service?
Speaker 2:I'm going to kind of pause, not about if you have a child who's struggling. If you have a child, if you have a child of secondary school age, the first thing I would recommend is you jump on our Instagram, more education01. We're revamping the website at the moment, so the best place to catch us is more education01. Book your child in for a consultation, because I've had parents who have said I had a parent yesterday who took the assessment, took the assessment with us but didn't do the follow up, the consultation, and they came back to me a year later and said oh yeah, I got their report. We really need you. I could have told you that a year ago. We could have started the process you thought they were doing well. If you drive a high end car, yeah, I use a car analogy again. If you drive a Bentley, yeah believe me, you're going to you are going to service that?
Speaker 2:probably not every every 5,000 miles. Yeah, because why do we treat certain possessions with more care and attention and upkeep than we would our own children? We it's almost like we palm them off to these educational institutions and hope for the best and then, when the best doesn't happen, there's a lot of complaints from us. When you've put everything in and you know and then it's not gone right, then you can ask. To come back to a question, we would like to be able to support all children. So catch us at more education. 01. Insta that's probably the best place. We're also on TikTok. You can find our videos at more education. You can DM me.
Speaker 2:We have our ebook, the more education is essential guide to a secondary school. So that's a guide for parents If your child is in secondary school, if they're about to start secondary schools. We start from choosing the right school all the way up to post 16. Every single parent should download this book. It's that simple. It's not rocket science. You've got it there. That is what I would say the starting point is. So, yeah, you can catch us there. We've got the links for the download. We're launching it in the next week or so you should see it everywhere.
Speaker 1:Phenomenal. Ziggy, thank you so much for your time today and I really appreciate it. It's been great talking to you and I'd love that We'll have a conversation with you again.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Whenever you're ready, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you for your patience.