A chairman with heart

It may be a coincidence that the Chairperson of Atterbury Property Holdings and Attacq Limited is also a champion of educational transformation, since education, alongside culture is a cornerstone of our very own Atterbury Trust. But at Atterbury we believe that likeminded people and organisations find each other… We find out more about Pierre Tredoux’s remarkable educational project

As part of your business Barnstone Education you have invested in schools on a personal level. What is your vision for this endeavour?
I am passionate about giving back through education and that is why I started Barnstone Education three years ago, with a vision to transform education in South Africa. We built our first school, Prestige College, in Soshanguve and it opened in January 2015. It is a proper mega school with 1700 children ranging from Grade R to Grade 12 – we’ll have our first matric class in 2017. Our focus is on teaching pupils not only the regular academic subjects but also incorporate entrepreneurial skills into the curriculum. I want to plough back my own skills and business experience and give kids the skills to create work for themselves, because many of them won’t be able to go to university.

What a massive project! What comes next?
We are currently constructing the second school in Daveyton on the East Rand. Our model is affordable private schools, and we are targeting the new middle-class families and picking our locations around the new suburbs that are being developed. We plan 10 more schools around Gauteng in the next five years, and I’m hoping to have 15 000 children in our schools by 2020. We also plan a teacher training facility to ensure quality of education. The schools will all be fully wifi-enabled, students will use tablets, there won’t be any textbooks. I want to bring in teaching methodologies from Finland, Norway and Sweden, where they use technology very effectively in schools. I want to find a way to engineer education so that children can perform better regardless of where they come from. I am really hoping that some future business leaders will come out of our schools.

If you were given executive powers to make a difference in South Africa’s education system, what would be your main priority?
The training of teachers would be top of my list. That, and getting discipline into the schools. I would get rid of unions in education, and start paying teachers well. Teachers who are passionate about what they do change the whole picture; discipline in school starts with the teachers, but when you have inexperienced or lazy teachers no discipline is possible.

You’re an alumni of Stellenbosch University, which has just done away with Afrikaans as its main language of instruction. What is your opinion on this controversial subject?
It is my belief that the US has made the right decision to ensure the university’s survival and future relevance. I love Afrikaans, and that is what I speak at home, but English is my business language and I remember how much I battled to express myself internationally at the start of my career. I wanted my own children to have a less limiting experience, and I feel it’s a more expansive view to embrace the world and offer more choice, as Stellenbosch is now doing, rather than huddle into a laager at the southern-most point of Africa.

What world event has made an indelible impression on you?
The transformation of South Africa into a full democracy. It brought me back from England, and gave me an incredible understanding of diversity and how important it is to understand and respect people even when you differ in terms of cultural background, religion and language. It changed me and made me a better person. I was privileged to work alongside Nelson Mandela over a number of years, as we set up the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship, and it was a massively inspirational experience.

Finally, what technological advance do you wish would happen in your lifetime?
I would love to see that the power of technology really becomes available to less privileged people in our schools, and that our children could gain access to the best teachers in the world through the use of technology.