James Tooley

James Tooley is professor of education policy at Newcastle University, UK. He is the author of The Beautiful Tree (Penguin), a best-seller in India and winner of the 2010 Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Prize, based on his ground-breaking research on low-cost private education in India, China and Africa. This research was awarded gold prize in the first International Finance Corporation/Financial Times Private Sector Development Competition, and was profiled in an American PBS documentary alongside the work of Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunus.

His work has landed him in many difficult and adventurous situations. One of these is profiled in his latest book, Imprisoned in India (Biteback).

Building on his research, Tooley has dedicated himself to creating working models of innovative practice in low-cost private education to help showcase its potential to extend access to, and improve educational opportunities for, lower income families. He is currently working in Honduras with Cadmus Academies, a new chain of schools featuring a blended learning model. He is cofounder and chairman of Omega Schools, a chain of low-cost private schools in Ghana, which in four years grew to 40 schools with 20,000 students. He is also patron of the Association of Formidable Educational Development, an association of 5,000 low-cost private schools in Nigeria with nearly 1 million children and chief mentor of the National Independent Schools Alliance (India). Previously he has taught and researched at the Universities of Oxford and Manchester; his first job was a mathematics teacher in Zimbabwe.