Richard Branson. Simon Cowell. Deborah Meaden. Jon Snow. Jeremy Clarkson. Alan Sugar. What do they have in common? Most would consider them successful individuals whom the public listen to and respect on a wide range of subjects. (Well maybe not Clarkson!) However, the other thing they all have in common is they did poorly, in some cases spectacularly poorly, at school and the individuals who did go on to college continued to do poorly there.

The question many including myself in the world of business keep asking is if education is actually a good indicator of future potential.

So some background that I’d like bring forward is that the current system, indeed the only system of education we’ve ever had, was created during the enlightenment. During this period we had the industrial revolution and those in power decided that workers would be more productive if they could read and write. The financial gains of this outweighing the counter-argument that the lower classes of society were not capable of learning to read and write. So let’s stop there for a moment. Imagine if you said that last bit in today’s society.

“Joe Bloggs is not able to learn to read and write because he’s poor/lower class”

There would be outrage.

But I would, perhaps controversially, hypothesise that we’re doing exactly that today. We’re saying if you’re not good enough at school, you’re not good enough to have a good job. Not good enough to get a high salary. I would go even as far as to say many come out of education system believing they are worth less than the person next to them because they got a grade lower than them.

So back to our education system which was created when intelligence was defined as deductive reasoning and knowledge of the classics i.e. Plato/Aristotle/Socrates etc. While the educators out there might say we’ve moved on significantly, in one sense I would disagree. Fundamentally our education system back then and now still measures verbal and logical intelligences. It still places a greater emphasis on science-based subjects over creative based subjects.

Howard Gardner did extensive research into human intelligence and came up with a simple model. It stated that we had 9 intelligences; Musical – rhythmic, Visual-spatial, Verbal-Linguistic, Logical-mathematical, Bodily – kinestetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Naturalistic and Existential. (the latter two were added in a follow up). All these types of intelligence and we only value, develop and measure 2. Think about those ‘naughty’ kids you knew at school or are friends of your kids currently. I firmly believe that rather than brand them because they don’t fit our ancient education system we should explore the options of where their potential may be. At this point, I should caveat that research in a variety of places hasn’t proven that a strength in a certain intelligence and particular learning styles are correlated in any way. However, smarter people than me are debating this.

My plea to 21st century Britain is that we need to revolutionise our educational system. Why do we tar children who don’t conform to a very narrow set of aptitudes? Imagine a system where each child’s education was customised to his or her needs, it focussed on the intelligences they were strong in and was flexible enough to adapt as they developed, matured and changed. Some may laugh at this as a fantasy that costs too much money but what is the price that you would be willing to put on your children’s future success? Business has already built bespoke products that scale and are cost efficient and this personalised interaction with the consumer is only becoming more popular, why can’t education do the same?