Determined to face his past head on, Sir Rod Aldridge returned to the place it all began. Apart from a few new pictures and posters on the walls, not much had changed. He can still pinpoint exactly where his desk was positioned. He can still remember how he felt that day. And so whilst some things remain the same, the following chapters of Rod’s life tell a very different story.
“It’s unbelievable that after all that’s happened to me since, it can still have such an impact on me.” Reaching for the glass of water in front him, Rod’s voice continues to carry the burden of that memory. “I was very upset about failing.”
The failure he’s referring to is the 11-plus exam, a test that didn’t just determine which school you’d attend, it categorised you as a person. At just 10 years old, Sir Rod was defined by the system as someone unworthy of investment, someone who wasn’t quite bright enough for a grammar school education. He remembers the exam vividly, particularly the spelling section. “I remember writing February three different ways because one of them was bound to be right. I struggled with English. Maths was always my subject.”
Rod passed the first part but failed the second. And that failure set the course for everything that followed.
“It defined you at 10 or 11 and categorised you into somebody who was either worthy of education or not. The alternative was an education that marked you in a way that felt very much like ‘unfit for purpose.’ The impact was immediate and brutal. I felt like a second-class citizen.”
But it wasn’t just the institutional rejection that pained him. It was the human cost. Rod’s mother and father were devastated. His working-class family had pinned their hopes on him, their only child. And then there was his grandfather, the man who meant everything to him.
“I can still remember the day when we were walking down the road in Portslade. He spotted our neighbours coming up ahead, and he actually crossed the road. Not because he didn’t want to see them, but because he knew they were going to ask him, “‘How did Rod get on?’”
That moment of shame, of a beloved grandfather unable to face the neighbours, planted something in the young Rod. Anger and a deep sense of injustice.
“That is what has driven me my whole life. “It’s pathetic, but I got angry because I didn’t like being categorised in that way, and I thought I was a lot better than that.”
THE DAY THEY WERE LEFT BEHIND
The day the other children went off to the grammar school, the remaining ten pupils, Rod included, were left behind in that hall. Just left there, all day, while their peers got their chance at a different future.
“The system basically blocked out any studying of A-levels, and any thought of university - instantly gone.” The train had split onto two tracks, and Rod was on the one leaving school at 16 with just a handful of O-Levels, ill-equipped to start work the following Monday.
But, what the system had failed to account for, was Rod’s sheer grit and determination to overcome his nagging feeling of rejection. To prove the system wrong.
For that, Rod found something unexpected.
THE BALLROOM YEARS
From the ages of seven to 20, Rod danced competitively. It’s a detail that surprises people, a footnote in the biography of a man who would go on to build a multibillion FTSE 100 company. But those years on the dance floor were foundational.
“Dancing gave me something the education system had taken away - achievement, recognition.” Proof that he was, in fact, good enough. It was also a space where his mother’s and father’s expectations could be met, and the structure and discipline of competitive dancing provided a framework where he could excel and please his parents. His competing took him on an incredible journey, leading him to perform at the Royal Albert Hall, and the world-famous Tower Ballroom in Blackpool.
The parallels to his later life are striking. “I’m a person that prepares for things and thinks ahead,” he tells me. “I like to know what I’m going to do and when I’m going to do it, and I like to have control over that.” That same discipline that served him in the ballroom would later drive his business success.
“I’m an all-in, all-out person. I either love something and do it, or I don’t and I won’t.” Rod explains. Whether it was dancing, building businesses, or later, his philanthropic work, he commits completely or not at all.
SPOTTING THE OPPORTUNITY
Rod left school on a Wednesday and started working in local government the following Monday. He was equipped with what he had, which wasn’t what the system deemed impressive. However, he qualified as an accountant at 22, studying at home, in the evenings and weekends, But he also had something that no grammar school could have taught him: the ability to recognise opportunity.
“You will get an opportunity in life that has the potential to change your life - it’s a question of whether you recognise it or not.”
For Rod, that opportunity came when he spotted a gap in the market for outsourcing public sector services. That knack of spotting a gap led him to a 22-year career building Capita - a FTSE 100 company that today employs over 60,000 people. Not bad for someone who was told he would amount to nothing.
The 11-year-old boy left in the hall may be an image that has haunted him, but it is also the same image that has spurred his determination into proving everyone (himself included) that they got him very wrong.
A LIFE STILL STRUCTURED
Today, at an age when most would have long since retired, Sir Rod maintains the same structured approach that got him through those early years. “I’m a person that will never retire,” he states with conviction. He’s up at 6:15 each morning, his days carefully managed with his PA, his diary meticulously planned. But there’s a crucial difference now. He no longer feels the pressure he did before to be and do everything.
“I still like a blank sheet of paper. I like to build things, to create things. That will never change” he says. “I believe that our young people need the space to learn, explore and to fail.” It’s the perspective of someone whose early years were shaped by a system that still jars him - one that he says is outdated and redundant.
WHEN THINGS DON’T GO TO PLAN
I ask him about control, about what happens when things don’t go according to plan. It’s a question that feels particularly relevant for someone whose life was fundamentally altered by a single exam at 11 years old.
“I would agree with you that a lot of things that have happened to me haven’t been planned. I don’t think you can plan to the nth degree and I think you’ve got to spot opportunity, and when opportunity comes, you’ve got to recognise it is a chance to do ‘different’ and go for it.”
Rod has spent his life around people who talk about what could have happened to them if they’d done this or that. I sense that it’s a perspective that irritates him. It’s clear he is both a man of his word and of action. He took the opportunities that came his way, even when they looked nothing like what he’d imagined for himself.
Yet, despite his self-assuredness, he still finds himself overthinking. “I am a worrier,” he confesses. “I’m not a great sleeper actually.” Current projects keep him up at night. The Cricket Centre at The University of Brighton. His Foundation. The complexity of mixing family and business.
But there’s something telling in what keeps him engaged. These aren’t the worries of someone trying to prove himself anymore. These are the concerns of someone trying to give back, to create the opportunities for others that he was denied.
THE FIGHT THAT STILL FIRES HIM
Perhaps the most striking thing about my conversation with Sir Rod is that the 11-plus system, the one that categorised him as not good enough 60 years ago, still exists. About 65 grammar schools in England still use this selective system. “It’s crazy that it continues to be used as a benchmark that can literally make or break a young person’s future.”
The anger in his voice isn’t the raw fury of that 11-year-old boy anymore. It’s more of a measured outrage of someone who built a life in defiance of a system, only to discover that system is still categorising children. Still telling children they’re not good enough, still leaving some behind in halls while others get their chance.
Cemented in his ‘why’, Rod believes that where you come from should not dictate where you are going. Founded in 2006, The Aldridge Foundation provides young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, education and experiences that will level the playing field.
Passionate that every young person can benefit from developing an entrepreneurial mindset, alongside their education, Sir Rod has created a family of 12 schools and colleges, which are operated through a multi-academy trust. One of the schools is the very school he went to in Portslade as an 11-year-old! Through his work with academies, including his connection back to Benfield School where his story began, Rod is creating the opportunities the system denied him. It’s a circle completed, but one that reveals the work is far from finished.
THE STORIES WE CARRY FORWARD
Near the end of our conversation, Rod reflects on the importance of documenting lives and experiences. His mother lived to 101. He speaks of her with fondness that at the same time feels heavy. “When you actually think about what that means and all she lived through and witnessed, she was remarkable in many ways.”
And perhaps that heaviness is partially down to one of his greatest regrets - not recording his mother’s 100th birthday party. “For somebody who prepares, I failed her and I berate myself every time I think of that day.”
I get the sense that Sir Rod is his harshest critic. But it also reveals something central. His story is not a simple rags-to-riches arc. It’s layered, full of conflict but also full of triumph. It’s the story of a boy who was told he wasn’t good enough. A boy who found his worth on a dance floor. A boy who channelled anger into ambition. A boy whose fear of failure became the engine behind extraordinary success.
That same instinct to repair what once hurt him is now written into the work he dedicates himself to. In 2006 he founded the Aldridge Foundation, built on a belief he holds with conviction; where you come from should not dictate where you are going.
The charity partners with schools and academies to support young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, helping them build confidence, skills and the mindset to shape their own future. Through coaching sporting excellence, creative art pathways, enterprise programmes, and the Next Steps track for life beyond school, it offers the kind of opportunities the old system never offered its founder. Its impact is lived, not theoretical and can be told through those who have experienced it.
Samarah, who is currently a PPE student at the University of Oxford, joined the Foundation’s internship programme and spent her summer at BIE Executive in London. Nervous and unsure whether she belonged in a corporate environment, the Foundation helped her to build her confidence and communication skills. By the time her placement ended, her supervisors praised her professionalism and growth.
She left not just with experience, but with belief. “I would like to say a big thank you to BIE for the amazing opportunity to join their team. It has truly been an inspiring and educating experience in which I have left feeling so much more confident about pursuing my professional goals.”
And there is Johansel, now studying Chemistry at the University of Glasgow while completing a placement year at GSK. Before joining the Next Steps programme, the jump from school to university felt overwhelming. Applications, interviews and expectations. The Foundation helped him articulate his strengths, prepare for interviews, manage deadlines and navigate pressure. A bursary meant he could study without the weight of financial worry. He describes the programme simply. “The support, resources, and encouragement I’ve received have been a constant source of motivation, and I’m proud of how far I’ve come.”
These are not isolated stories. They are one of many thousands of young people who have been given the chance to imagine a brighter future. In many ways, they are the continuation of the story that began in that hall at Benfield. The story of a child the system overlooked, now reshaping the system for others.
That 11-year-old boy not only went on to build one of Britain’s most profitable companies, but in 2012 received a knighthood for his work with young people. Not bad for someone from a working-class background who left school with five O-levels. And yet, standing in that same hall decades later, he can still feel the emotion bubbling inside of him. The hurt, the anger, but also the determination.
And I find myself wondering whether, had Sir Rod passed the 11-plus, he would have become the man he is. Failure gave him grit and purpose. It carved empathy into him. He built an empire on what that system tried to deny him. And then he devoted the rest of his life to changing that system for others.
And as long as there are young people being told they’re not good enough, Sir Rod’s story will continue.
