Podcast Summary

Podcast: James Reed: All About Business
Episode 43: Can we save the post-covid schooling crisis with THIS AI tool? | Philippa De’Ath
Date: September 15, 2025
Host: James Reed
Guest: Philippa De’Ath, Co-founder & Chief Revenue Officer, Arbor Education

Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation between James Reed and Philippa De’Ath, co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Arbor Education, a leading EdTech company in the UK. They explore how advanced management information systems and AI-driven tools are transforming administrative processes in schools, lightening the load on teachers, supporting school leadership, and reshaping the future of education in the wake of the pandemic. Philippa shares her journey—from founding schools in Hackney to building Arbor into the top MIS provider—and discusses entrepreneurship, the challenges of scaling school technology, and the broader role of data and AI in education reform.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Does Arbor Education Do? (00:55–04:35)

• Arbor Overview:

  • Arbor provides a management information system (MIS) for schools ("B2B SaaS ERP system") to streamline data management and back office operations, removing admin from teachers’ and schools’ plates.
  • Philippa: "Our mission is to really transform the way this work gets done in schools... we're about taking all of that admin off their plates." [02:00]
  • Handles everything from attendance and behaviour to parental communications and payments.

• Scale and Market Penetration:

  • Over 10,000 UK schools use Arbor, with another 1,000 onboarding soon—nearly half the market.
  • About 24,000 schools in the UK total [03:14].

2. Why Cloud and AI Matter in Schools (05:26–08:22)

• Legacy vs. Cloud-Based Systems:

  • Traditional MIS are locked down, siloed, and inaccessible to central teams.
  • Cloud has enabled real-time access, transformational particularly during/after the pandemic.
  • Philippa: "Schools are way behind how you would expect to work in a business." [05:32]

• AI Implementation:

  • Arbor integrates AI in several ways:
    • Ask Arbor: A natural language query tool for data insights ("What's the attendance rate for boys today compared to national average?") [06:38–06:47]
    • Auto Absence: AI-driven attendance management, reducing manual processing from 90 min to 15–20 min a day [07:04–08:07]
    • AI-Driven Translation: Multilingual parental communications to reach diverse families [08:55]

• Impact:

  • Frees admin time to allow improved parent engagement and quicker responses to absence or issues.

3. Real-Time School Management and Benchmarking (10:00–12:00)

• For Academy Trust Leaders:
  • Centralized visibility for multi-school organizations via Arbor; real-time data on attendance, staff, and benchmarking against national trends.
  • Philippa: "We can offer really good statistical benchmarking data back to school leaders." [11:23]
  • Helps schools see not just internal data but broader context ("Is my school late after the football match, or is everyone?”) [11:41]

4. Entrepreneurial Education & The Importance of 'Oracy' (13:09–17:19)

• Fostering Entrepreneurship in Schools:

  • Entrepreneurship is linked to confidence and communication, not just subject knowledge.
  • Most state schools do not teach students to speak confidently (oracy).
  • Philippa: "What they don't do so well is teach you to really speak confidently...if you can't articulate why you're excited about it, it's not going to carry you very far." [15:06]
  • Extra-curriculars and creative education (like drama) often develop these crucial skills.

• AI’s Impact on Inquiry:

  • The rise of AI requires people to frame effective questions—another aspect of communication and curiosity.
  • Philippa: "You’ve got to learn how to speak or to query in a really different way as well. And that's a new set of skills we all have to learn." [16:52]

5. Personal Entrepreneurial Journey: Founding Schools & Arbor (17:31–31:02)

• Unique Schooling Background:

  • Philippa's experience at an entrepreneurial, family-run school inspired her inclination to found Hackney New Primary and Waterside Academy.
  • Philippa: "We thought it was okay to just like set up a school in a kitchen... The free schools program was kind of exactly that." [19:36]

• Challenges of Starting Schools:

  • Free Schools Programme saw communities pitch and establish schools with little guidance—Philippa describes "cowboy land" and the huge workload from hiring heads to designing buildings.
  • Philippa: “We wrote what then became a sort of 500 page proposal, got a thousand...signatures” [22:56]
  • Successfully opened Hackney New Primary and Waterside Academy.

• Genesis of Arbor:

  • Came from dissatisfaction with legacy school admin systems while founding schools: “I was thinking, oh, you know, maybe I can make one. I don't know how to go about doing that, but I've just made a school, so I probably can do that as well.” [28:06]
  • Joined Arbor as employee/customer #4, contributing as the company built the product from concept.

6. Growth, Ambitions & Vision (31:02–34:20)

• Ambitions:

  • Expand across the remaining half of UK schools, Wales, and Scotland.
  • International expansion, especially with small island nations or government-wide contracts.
  • Recent acquisitions: HR platform, staff development tools, and new workflow automation.

• Company Stats:

  • 420 employees, locations in London, Leeds, Lincoln, India, Serbia, and remote [32:37].

7. The Teacher/Admin Crisis & Big Picture (34:20–38:59)

• Teacher Burden Post-Covid:

  • Heavy stress and disengagement across the sector—AI seen as a relief for admin, but not a threat to actual teaching roles.
  • Philippa: "The administrative burden, like no one's saying we don't need administrators in schools, but maybe some of that admin could be done by the robot” [35:09]

• Role of Data & Cooperation:

  • Data is crucial for joined-up provision across education, health, social care—yet inter-agency cooperation is lagging behind technological possibilities.
  • Philippa: "Having a joined up ecosystem in public sector...it's not a technology barrier, but it is a cooperation barrier." [37:42]

8. Efficiency, Productivity & School Funding (38:59–43:22)

• How Arbor Helps Schools:
  • Facilitates funding audits, improves parental engagement, saves time and money (£5,000+/year for a primary school), and enables better top-down management from academy trusts.
  • Philippa: “A better run organization tends to attract more people to it.” [41:04]
  • Set and distribute assessment policies, centralize governance, and reduce duplication of work.

9. The Joy of Good EdTech & Future Recruitment (43:29–44:41)

• Aim for Joy in Use:

  • Arbor wants to be "a joy to use,” improving teacher morale ("little bit of joy, maybe that means you're going to be a slightly happier teacher in the classroom" [43:29]).

• Recruitment Tools:

  • Launching applicant tracking system and job boards, seeking a “full lifecycle view” from staff hiring to career development [44:31–45:03].

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Every day in Arbor is a school day... I like that what we do is quite hard... but we're nowhere near done."
  — Philippa De’Ath [45:58]

• "You’ve got to learn how to speak or to query in a really different way as well. And that's a new set of skills we all have to learn."
  — Philippa De’Ath [16:52]

• "I was employee number four and also customer number four, as it turned out...I thought they'd already finished building this whole system and I was just kind of joining.”
  — Philippa De’Ath [29:15]

• "What schools do well is teach you chemistry or a lot of facts...what they don't do so well is teach you to really speak confidently."
  — Philippa De’Ath [15:06]

• "I want Arbor to be a joy to use. That ultimately, if you're a teacher, when you open your laptop, you're thinking, 'cool,' instead of, 'ugh.'"
  — Philippa De’Ath [43:29]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:55–04:35: Arbor intro & market position
• 05:26–08:22: Cloud, AI tools & parental engagement
• 10:00–12:00: Trust leader/CEO dashboard, benchmarking
• 13:09–17:19: Oracy, entrepreneurship, the need for communication skills
• 17:31–31:02: Philippa’s schooling, founding Hackney schools, and joining Arbor
• 31:02–34:20: Growth ambitions & international expansion
• 34:20–38:59: Teacher/admin challenges, multi-agency data, inter-operations
• 38:59–43:22: Arbor’s impact on funding, efficiency, productivity
• 43:29–44:41: Edtech as 'joy,' recruitment and staff lifecycle tools
• 45:25–46:55: Rapid-fire questions: what drives Philippa, 5-year vision

For Further Information

• Visit arboreducation.com
• Check out Arbor's events and webinars (e.g., Arborfest)
• Connect for MAT (multi-academy trust) leader webinars and resources

Tone:
A candid, practical, and optimistic discussion focused on actionable insights, with a blend of humor and realism.
Recommendation:
Highly recommended for school leaders, EdTech professionals, and anyone interested in the intersection of education, technology, and entrepreneurship.