News: U-Explore appoints new chairman as growth looks set to continue

Rotherham education specialists, U-Explore has appointed Jerry Jarvis as their new chairman, signaling an exciting new phase for the company.

The innovative enterprise specialises in enabling schools to deliver reality based careers information, advice and guidance. Their U-Explore national school product is an innovative software solution which engages with young people through cutting edge media.

Andy Pickles, CEO of U-Explore said: "As a young growing business it is essential to get the right support at the right time from the right people, to enable us to achieve our vision and manage our growth through these exciting but challenging early years.

"It is also important to the company that whomever we work with understands our vision, our culture, our creativity and can bring a positive challenge and contribution to the team and the development of U-Explore.

"In appointing Jerry Jarvis as Chairman of U-Explore we have an incredibly experienced business leader who has driven transformational change in education and someone who has had an appreciation of U-Explore since the early days of our development over five years ago.

"These are very exciting times for U-Explore and we are all looking forward to taking our business on to the next level with the experience and passion of Jerry Jarvis as our Chairman."

Jerry was the Managing Director of Edexcel, the UK's largest awarding body, from 2005 to 2009 after originally joining the company as Operations Director in 2000. Throughout his time at Edexcel, he helped to dramatically change the culture and performance of the charity, taking its value from £20m to an estimated £900m.

Prior to his time at Edexcel, Jerry worked in operational management in the IT, quality and service sectors for organisations such as Thorn-EMI and BAe systems.

Jerry said: "What excites me about joining U-Explore and what really grabbed me initially is the context that it is bringing to education. I met Andy many years ago and was struck then by his passion to transform careers education so that students had better access to reality based information about the world of work.

"U-Explore is bringing a context to learning and is therefore providing a purpose to it. It introduces a young person for the first time to the importance and relevance that learning really has and when this motivation is given to a student, this is when the real learning takes place. Providing a context to education is important to the future success of our next generation of workers and therefore critical to our country.

"I'm delighted to be joining the team at U-Explore and am looking forward to helping the company grow and develop so that it gains recognition across the country for the excellent and unique work it does in providing inspirational careers information, advice and guidance for young people."

Last year, U-Explore moved into new offices at Templeborough, doubled their workforce, grew their network three fold, and opened Maltby Academy as lead sponsor.

U-Explore website
Rotherham

Images: U-Explore