‘I’m on a mission to help teachers’
Susie Seaton loved being a teacher, but the long hours she spent making classroom materials inspired her to set up educational resources website Twinkl from her spare bedroom.
TThe response from educators has been incredible
en years ago, I was sitting at the dinner table with my husband Jon, feeling frustrated with work. At the time, I taught at a primary school in Sheffield. I loved my job, the children and the school. But there weren’t enough resources and materials to take into class, so I spent the evenings and weekends making my own.
I was tired, and I knew that so many of my friends and colleagues were in the same position.
That evening, Jon, then a lawyer, and I came up with the idea for Twinkl: a subscription-based platform filled with lesson plans, games, activity sheets, posters and everything else we could think of that teachers needed. A week later, we started the company together from our spare bedroom.
We set out with a very simple mission: ‘we help those who teach’. We worked around the clock to build Twinkl while also continuing with our full-time jobs. After two years, we knew we needed to go all-in if Twinkl was going to grow. The amazing response we’d already had from teachers and parents was enough encouragement for us to take the plunge. Jon quit his job, and after one last term in school, I left mine, too.
We moved into an office space in Sheffield and gradually grew our team. Most people we employed were former teachers and we built a strong network of current teachers to make sure the resources we created were useful and engaging. One Twinkl Facebook group specifically for Early Years teachers now has 78,000 members, and we’re in constant communication with that community to find out what they need and how we can best support them.
Today, Twinkl has more than 570 team members globally, with staff in every continent doing the same work to help educators in their own countries. On the website, there are more than 640,000 resources for children aged 0-18, and more than 8m sign-ups. It gives me an extraordinary sense of pride.
We speak with parents and teachers most days; there’s a consistent theme of gratitude for us providing high-quality materials at an accessible price. This incredible response from teachers everywhere is almost overwhelming. We also invite kids into the office to test out new materials, and it’s amazing to see them enjoying what we create. Jon and I now have a son of our own, who’s almost two. He loves to listen to the songs on the Twinkl Youtube channel and dance along with his very cute moves.
During lockdown, when schools closed, a lot of parents who had never realised how hard teaching is were now home-schooling their children. At the time, we knew we had a choice: either make a lot of money from sign-ups to our resources, or open up what we’ve built and be generous. In the end, making it free for those three months was an easy decision. Showing kindness during a difficult time was the right thing to do. While it wouldn’t be sustainable for us to be a free service for ever, the home-learning section will be freely available for as long as it’s needed.
Twinkl has been extremely successful, but it’s never been about the numbers for us. We just wanted to help. Teaching is such a fulfilling profession with a dedicated and passionate workforce. But it’s also hard, and often comes with a lot of pressure. It makes me happy to know we’re giving teachers a helping hand.
• twinkl.co.uk