The Beautiful Tree

by James Tooley

  I was flown to Singapore for a long weekend in September 2006 to pick up the prize at the annual Governors’ Meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. I was honored to meet with the judges, to discuss their ideas, and to hear about the other prize-winning entries. The day after the presentation, the Financial Times published an edited version of my essay, under the title “Private Schools for the Poor Seek Investors.” A day later, a message was waiting for me on my answer machine: “Professor Tooley, I’ve read your article in the Financial Times . . . well, I’m your investor.” It was Richard Chandler, the New Zealander founder and chairman of the Singaporean private investment company Orient Global. Over the course of the next two months, we met, in Newcastle and Dubai, exploring ways in which we could collaborate on our shared vision of how to improve lives and increase prosperity through market-based solutions. It was such an incredible opportunity, to do something practical based on all the ideas I had accumulated during the course of my journey.

  In April 2007, I joined Orient Global as president of its newly created $100 million Education Fund, aimed at investing in private education in emerging economies. The Fund has given grants to several of the organizations and people mentioned in this book: to George Mikwa and the new Kenya Independent Schools Association, working in the slums of Nairobi; to AFED, the Association of Formidable Educational Development, serving low-cost private schools in the shantytowns of Nigeria; to Joy’s school in Zimbabwe after Mugabe’s troops bulldozed the shantytowns where her parents lived; and to scholarship schemes serving the remote village private schools in rural Gansu, China.

  Most significantly, through the Fund I’ve laid the foundation for a chain of low-cost private schools. Closely following ideas set out in the last chapter. I’ve guided the initial research and development for curriculum, technology, and learning methods, acquired the first schools and built a strong team to carry the vision forward. The education entrepreneurs I’ve known longest are based in Hyderabad. So it is there for the last two years I made my home, and where I am writing this conclusion, working closely with Anwar, Wajid, and Reshma, all people I first met back in 2000, when my journey started.

  And so this story ends in Hyderabad, where it began. The story of private schools serving the world’s poor is only beginning.

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