James Tooley

James Tooley is a professor of education policy at Newcastle University. There he is the director of the E. G. West Centre, which is dedicated to choice, competition, and entrepreneurship in education. Fresh out of college in the early 1980s, Tooley went to Zimbabwe to become a public school teacher. Now an award-winning scholar featured in PBS and BBC documentaries, he has written several books including The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themselves, and his work has been covered in Newsweek, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. He was a professor in leading universities in England, Canada, and South Africa, and also lived in Hyderabad, India, where he worked with the entrepreneurs and teachers who inspired his research.