Episode 4: Al Kingsley MBE | THE IMPLEMENTERS

Al Kingsley has been on every side of the EdTech table: supplier, MAT chair, alternative-provision chair, SEND board chair, BESA EdTech chair. Which means when he tells you why your pitch doesn't land, he isn't guessing.

Al Kingsley MBE is CEO of NetSupport — the classroom management, safeguarding and remote-management company that has been building infrastructure for schools since 1989. He chairs multi-academy trusts across several English regions, has chaired alternative provision, sits on the DfE regional schools advisory board and chairs the county SEND board. He's also the author of five books on EdTech and school governance, and was named an EdTech Digest 2026 Global Leader two days before this recording.

IN THIS EPISODE

·      Why NetSupport has deliberately kept AI out of its safeguarding product — the 'whoop whoop' problem and why context beats pattern-matching

·      The three skills every EdTech company selling into schools eventually needs — and why it's usually the third one they under-hire for

·      How a MAT risk register actually reads from the inside: recruitment and retention, reputational damage, cyber security, estate condition — and why none of it is sexy

·      Why classroom tools should be built to be invisible — the toolbar colour-change example for children who won't raise their hand

·      Cognitive offloading: the phrase that now gets dropped into every AI conversation whether it fits or not

·      Selling concepts, not features — the BETT-stand anecdote where more toolbar features won deals but lost the classroom

·      Pitching to a school vs pitching to a MAT — why the messaging has to shift when the buyer is aggregating 20 schools' data rather than one

·      Why the current assessment system is the real problem, not AI — the viva and doctorate comparison, and what project-based and problem-based learning is actually exposing

·      Microsoft and Google in the room when the digital strategy gets written — and why Al is prepared to be blunt about whose interests that serves

·      The British Council session before BETT — North Africa and Middle East school-system leaders running initiatives the UK could learn from

·      Alternative provision, county lines, and why the pupil referral unit had higher engagement online during the pandemic

·      The Year 6–7 transition 'cloud' zone — how one of his secondary schools takes the primary-teacher nurture model seriously for pupils who aren't ready to leave it behind

Episode 4 opens THE IMPLEMENTERS block of Series One.

LINKS

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and everywhere via Podbean

Full episode and transcript: https://podcast.co/b2educationunpacked

EdTech Sales Mastery course: https://seventhsibling.co.uk/self-paced-courses

Website: https://seventhsibling.co.uk