‘Maths geek’ who ditched teacher job to stream classes online and increased salary to £100k makes education ‘cool’

A self-professed “maths geek” and teacher who streams revision classes to more than 2,000 children online and earns more than double his previous teaching salary at £100,000 has said he wants to make education “cool”.

Neil Trivedi, 29, who lives in Stanmore, London, has always been mathematically gifted, taking his maths GCSE and A-level examinations a year early and graduating with a first class degree in the subject.

With a passion for helping others, Neil did not want to “chase the money” and enter the world of finance, so instead he decided to become a maths teacher where he was earning around £40,000 after several years.

When a former classmate contacted him out of the blue with a business proposition – to level the playing field for children struggling to learn and parents unable to afford private tuition – Neil decided to quit his teaching job and join the online learning platform MyEdSpace in 2022.

Since then, the platform has attracted more than 6,000 users and grown around five times year-on-year, and some 2,500 students are currently using MyEdSpace for online teaching.

While Neil does not fit the traditional profile of a maths teacher, as he often wears hoodies during lessons, looking like “Kenny from South Park”, and uses catchphrases such as “noice”, he believes having a “personality” and not taking himself too seriously make him relatable to students.

With his green screen and multi-coloured microphone, he once did a live eight-hour maths crash course, complete with a mid-session Nando’s, on YouTube – and there was an average of 1,500 students online for the duration of the stream.

Statistics from the “surreal” video show that it had more than 2,800 hours of watch time and nearly 40,000 chat messages, and Neil even had students contact him afterwards to say that he “saved their grade”.

Speaking about the “monster” that has been created with MyEdSpace over the last two years, Neil told PA Real Life: “The journey of making maths accessible to everyone has just been incredible.

“It doesn’t matter if you want to be on my paid course, or just learning free online, but it’s just making education cool and making it trendy.

“It’s trying to portray educators in a different light, showing students that, actually, you can be cool and geeky at the same time.”

Neil said he attended “rough” schools growing up in north-west London, meaning he did not have “the best environment to excel in education”.

However, since “maths came naturally” to him, he was offered the opportunity to sit his GCSE examination a year early, aged 14 – and despite doing no revision and “winging it”, he achieved an A.

He then sat his A-level maths examination a year early, aged 16, and attained an A*, and this prompted him to study the subject at university.

“My brain just started clicking with really complicated concepts,” he said.

He graduated from University College London (UCL) with a first class degree, averaging 87% in his final year, and Neil is proud to say he is a “maths geek”.

He even has a maths tattoo on his arm of Euler’s Identity, known as “the most beautiful equation”.

But he faced a “moral dilemma” when deciding on what career path to choose post graduation, as many of his peers wanted to go into banking.

“Most of my friends were going into the city, just chasing the money, but there was something about it that just didn’t sit right with me,” Neil said.

“I didn’t want to work for a big corporation and just be another plus one.

“I was already working with children, I had been working in what was known as holiday play schemes and I had been private tutoring since 15 years old, helping my mates out.

“I wanted to help people and do maths at the same time, which is why teaching was a perfect fit.”

Neil completed his teacher training between 2016 and 2017 and was promoted to head of A-level maths at his first school, London Academy, because he “broke records” with his Year 13 students’ exam pass rates.

He then moved to Claremont High School for a “new challenge”, where he broke records again as head of Key Stage 5 in terms of student progress, before returning to London Academy.

In 2022, former college classmate Sean Hirons sent Neil a message on WhatsApp with a business proposition and they later met up.

Sean and MyEdSpace co-founder Kharis Yanakidis had a vision for changing the way children interacted with education, making it more accessible and affordable, and Neil jumped at the opportunity.

“I love new projects, I like taking on new challenges,” Neil said.

“It was a risk because the business was zero, we weren’t making any money – it was just an idea at the time – but as soon as I joined, we could start selling a product.”

This took Neil into MyEdSpace as a founding employee and the head of maths and, since then, he said they have created this “monster” with more than 2,500 students currently using the platform for online teaching.

Despite starting with only two students, Neil now sees up to 250 children attending his lessons online at one time and has gained more than two million followers across his social media platforms.

Neil teaches up to 600 students per day online, who are aged eight to 18, and often uses props and wears his red heart-shaped sunglasses while teaching to make his lessons “fun” and “relatable”.

“I can convince anyone that maths is cool as hell, you just have to give me an hour, one-to-one, and I’ll prove to you that maths is actually awesome,” Neil said.

Neil, who has a salary of £75,000 but can earn £100,000 or more with performance-based bonuses and equity, loves being able to change children’s “restricted” mindsets and encourage their “enthusiasm for maths”.

With an ever-growing presence of social media and technology and children “wanting to be online”, Neil thinks you “can’t resist where education is going” – and that is why MyEdSpace is so popular.

Speaking about his and MyEdSpace’s success, he said: “Obviously I’m doing maths, but they love the personality of making maths funny, being a human behind it, and not taking yourself too seriously.

“When you’re tailoring to kids, they don’t want someone who is in front of the camera in a suit and tie – it’s boring and not relatable.

“We’re very tailored to low to mid-income households, students who are disadvantaged, and where I grew up very disadvantaged myself, I can meet them at the same place and be relatable in that respect.

“We’re building a community, so they feel part of something, and I think being part of something that’s bigger than you as an individual is super important for your growth – and that’s what we provide here.”

MyEdSpace offers revision bootcamps from just £9.99 per subject or from £60 per month for KS2, KS3, GCSE and A-level.

For more information, visit myedspace.co.uk, and to follow Neil on social media, search @neildoesmaths.