The Notebook: Guy Hands on shattering the class ceiling, how to hire the right person and the importance of empathy
The Notebook is where the City’s movers and shakers get a few things off their chest. Today it’s Guy Hands, founder of Terra Firma Capital Partners
Our education system separates pupils. That’s wrong
Sir Keir Starmer recently made headlines with his ambition to “shatter Britain’s class ceiling” by reforming the education system. While less radical than Corbyn’s manifesto pledge in 2019 to abolish private schools altogether, defence of the creaky UK education system has come from far and wide.
I grew up in the state school system, hated my time and learned little. I have always been a strong advocate for reform. The impact of the pandemic makes this need greater now. Persistent lockdowns have exacerbated differences in the quality of education received between the two systems, and even within the state school system, official research from this year shows the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers is now widening for the first time since 2007.
Our current education system is most harmful in that it preserves social bubbles. The elite go from the privileged halls of private schools to the cloistered universities of Oxford and Cambridge – before often going straight to the cloisters of the legal profession. They lead the country without having ever stepped a foot outside a cloister. We talk about the importance of diversity in making good decisions, but our political class often have no contact with the people they are elected to represent.
Starmer’s plans are a good starting point but radical social change takes time. My wife Julia and I have seen this through our support of Mansfield College at Oxford University, where we managed to increase the number of state school pupils attending the college to 96 per cent over two decades. With an education system so dependent on who is running the country at any given time, sustainable reform is difficult. I hope for the sake of the Covid generation that necessity will trump party politics and we will create an education system fit for modern Britain where we mix pupils from different backgrounds for the greater good of all.
School’s Out – Alice Cooper album
This album is very nostalgic for me as the school summer holidays approach. I was nearly 13 when the title song of the album was released and was in one of the least happy periods of my life. I was struggling at the all-boys grammar school I attended and had come 98th out of 100 in the year. I got help from a Kent educational psychologist, but none of my friends at the time made it to sixth form. This period played a big part in shaping my desire to succeed in business but it is not an easy time to look back on, and I feel enormously for those teenagers who get no benefit from schooling and for whom their dream is “School’s out forever”.
Our interviewing process
When people interview for jobs at Terra Firma education and experience are only a tiny part of what we’re interested in. We run psychometric tests to decipher what kind of people may join us. Thinkers and those driven by passion are critical, but you also must have “closers” and “doers” to reach the goal. There is a tendency to see ‘ideas people’ as glamorous – the exciting part of businesses and the reason things get done. But ideas alone are but dreams – someone must execute them.
Empathy is everything
I was reminded recently how much perception can cloud reality. One of the most emotional things I’ve seen was when the charity I support, Engage Britain, had a session to listen to real people talking about their views of the political system. During the session an elderly woman met a gang member from her community.
She had been terrified to go outside because of the gang’s presence but upon meeting, their shared humanity shone through and she said: “He’s just like my grandson.” This was a facilitated session and that’s a rare situation, but the principle remains the same: dispelling hatred and mistrust comes from understanding that we have more similarities than differences.
It’s true that social norms can often encourage division rather than harmony. However, history will judge us by standards that do not yet exist, just as we judge the past by today’s standards. We are all a product of our time but empathy is transcendent: good people will stand the test of time by treating others with humanity and compassion while standing up for what is right.