Michael Heverin was forced to quit the teaching profession due to the effect it had on his mental health but he is now a successful tech entrepreneur with his Liverpool-based business. Tony McDonough reports

A former teacher who left the profession due to stress and the toll on his mental health has seen his education tech business names as one of the best in the UK.

Michael Heverin worked as a teacher for 15 years but the pressures of the job eventually became too much and he departed the sector. He recognised there needed to be a fundamental change in the way schools and recruitment agencies functioned to support the needs of teaching staff.

So in 2019 he co-founded Liverpool-based SupplyWell with recruitment specialist Raina Heverin and marketer and technologist Dan Price. Now SupplyWell is a growing  business r”un by teachers for teachers”.

It prides itself on ensuring that the happiness and wellbeing of educators and supply staff is at the forefront of its ethos and operations. In using the SupplyWell platform, schools across the Liverpool city region are saving significant sums of money, reducing teacher absence, whilst improving teacher pay and wellbeing.

And it has just been named as one of the 10 most exciting early-stage technology companies in the UK as part of a competition run by national growth platform, Tech Nation. The Rising Stars competition is the only national early-stage tech scaleup competition in the UK, designed to showcase early-stage companies.

As a top 10 winner, SupplyWell beat stiff competition from more than 330 UK companies. Micheal, who is the chief executive, said: “It is a massive privilege to be recognised by TechNation. Only 18 months  ago, we were a small start-up company operating from one desk.

“We have grown immensely since then and now employ almost a dozen staff with immediate plans to hire more as we look to expand across the UK. What’s more, we’ve not only survived, but thrived despite the challenges of the pandemic.

“It was my personal experiences as a teacher that has shaped and underpinned SupplyWell’s ‘tech for good’ ethos. We are serious about the problems we are solving in education and we hope this award will enable us to help even more schools, teachers and students.”