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20 fun facts about e4education

16 April 2021 Natasha Maycock

As part of our 20th birthday celebrations, we thought we'd share 20 fun facts about e4education that you may, or may not, be aware of:

1.  We were originally called eforeducation but the name was changed to e4education in 2004.

John Roach on BETT stand 2002

2. e4education's first school website was actually built as a favour! John Roach, our CEO & founder, was asked to build a website for his daughter's primary school

3. Our first paying customer was Northborough Primary School in Peterborough. Our first secondary school website was for The Deacon's School (now Thomas Deacon Academy).

Images of Newborough Primary School & TDA website in angled iMac screens

They are both still customers today!

4. The technology, designs and education sector may have changed, but our vision has remained the same - to provide-quality products and services to schools to help make their lives easier, enhance their reputation and improve their community engagement. 

5. We're very hilly! We currently work with 62 schools and trusts with the word 'hill' in their name.

6. We also work with 258 customers whose name starts with 'St'. That's over 10% of our customer base!

St Jude & St Paul's is just one of these customers!

7. To support our customer-first approach, we recently created a new customer relations team. They aim to check in with all our customers at least once every term. 

8. Typically, September is our busiest month for new websites going live due to the start of the new academic year. 

9. Our record for most new school websites launched in one month is 67! You can check out a selection of our 'latest lives' each month on our blog. 

10. We are a family - but for some it is more of a family. CEO John's two daughters also work for the business. Katie is our resident photographer and Emily recently joined our Customer Relations Team after spending 6 years as a teacher. 

Emily, John and Katie 

11. The total length of service for all of our current team members is more than 215 years! The longest serving member of staff (apart from John, the founder, of course!) is Mark Doran, who joined us in 2004. 

12. Our youngest staff member, Tristan, was just 8 months old when e4education was formed twenty years ago in 2001! 

13. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, all of our staff were successfully working from home within just 24 hours, thanks to our brilliant IT team. 

14. We have a resident DJ in the house who has played at the Royal Albert Hall and appeared on Top of the Pops in the 90s! 

Before the pandemic hit, Fridays in the office were filled with music. We can't wait to get back together to update the Friday playlists!

15. Over the last 20 years we’ve supported many amazing charities, including Macmillan Cancer Support, Children In Need and locally based Peterborough charity, Little Miracles

Our team always throw themselves in charity events – whether it’s baking up a storm or cycling the equivalent distance of Peterborough to London, to ensure we raise hundreds of pounds at each event.

A selection of sweet treats on a table with a Pudsey sticker on a coffee mug in the foreground

3 members of staff on the stairs in various sporting gear for charity

9 squares showing bake off goodies from various charity events

16. Last year (2020) our customers added a whopping 916,705,795 words of content to their websites. With more new websites going live every day, we wonder how many it will be this year! 

17. Support is available five days a week between 8am – 4.30pm and more importantly it’s unlimited. That’s right, we don’t limit or charge for the support we provide our customers.  

18. We work hard to make sure our network is the best it can be and as a result our average website availability uptime is 99.9%.

19. Our staff have some very cute pets. One of the cutest is probably John’s dog, Freddie, who likes to help John work and often makes appearances at the office and in online meetings!  

John's dog Freddie laying on a keyboard
Freddie hard at work!

20. We all love websites - especially seeing them go live and hearing positive feedback from our customers!

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