The Opitus Group is owned and directed by Sally and Phill Featherstone.
Sally and Phill met in the 1960s at Goldsmiths’ College in London, where they were training to be teachers. They married about a year later. For the next 2 decades they pursued separate careers, Sally working in infant and primary schools and Phill in secondary schools, before both moving to advisory and support work in local authorities. In the late 1990s they started Featherstone Education Ltd, a publishing company, which they ran until it was sold to A&C Black Publishers Ltd in 2008.
Sally and Phill live in a Pennine farmhouse in Calderdale, Yorkshire. They have two children and four grandchildren.
Sally Featherstone
Sally was born on Hayling Island, one of five children, and was educated at Purbrook Grammar School and Goldsmiths’ College, London. After qualifying as a teacher she taught in primary schools in east London, Camden Town and rural Hampshire, specialising in 3-8 year-olds. Apart from maternity breaks Sally continued her career in teaching, becoming headteacher of a large infant and nursery school in an economically and socially deprived area of Leicester. Her school flourished and established a strong reputation for the quality of its work with parents and the community, recognised by the achievement of a Schools’ Curriculum Award.
Following her headship Sally joined the Leicestershire County Advisory Team as a Primary Adviser. She was link adviser for a large number of infant and primary schools in the north east of Leicestershire and an OFSTED Registered Inspector.
Sally left her local authority work in the mid 1990s to work independently as an inspector, consultant and trainer. She resigned from OFSTED in 1996 but carried on with her other work, running courses and speaking at conferences across the UK and abroad. She continues to be in high demand and her training diary is usually booked up for some time ahead.
Sally is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Phill Featherstone
Phill was born in Yorkshire and educated at Rishworth School. When he was 18 his family moved to the Midlands. At the same time he left home to start higher education. Phill taught English and History for 4 years at a secondary school in West Ham before becoming Head of the English Department at a secondary school in Hampshire. This was followed by appointment as Director of Resources at a large comprehensive school on the edge of Portsmouth. After a break to take a further qualification, Phill became Director Studies and Head of 6th Form at a community college in Leicestershire. He followed this with a spell as an advisory teacher in Leicestershire, supporting the TVEI programme, and in 1990 he was appointed County Director for Technical and Vocational Education and 14-19 Inspector for Northamptonshire. He was also an OFSTED Registered Inspector and led NIAS (Northamptonshire Inspection & Advisory Service) teams on a number of inspections.
In 1995 Phill left Northamptonshire to join Sally working independently, providing training and consultancy for secondary schools and local authorities. He resigned from OFSTED in 1996 and in 1997 he withdrew from training to work full-time on developing their publishing business.
Phill has MAs from Cambridge and Leicester Universities.
Featherstone Education
Sally and
Phill published their first two books in 1996. For the previous year they had been consultants to a company introducing a programme to support home education through schools. This experience introduced them to the idea of publishing and to the opportunities for reaching a larger audience through print. In 1997 Sally wrote her first book, First Hand, which Phill edited and designed. They published it themselves later that year. At around the same time they gathered together a small team of teachers and former colleagues, which they commissioned to provide ideas for photocopiable homework activities linked to the National Literacy and Numeracy strategies for children throughout the primary age range. They published these – 14 books in total – under the name Homeworms in 1998-9. Homeworms were a big success and Featherstone Education became a limited company in 1999.
Phill published their first two books in 1996. For the previous year they had been consultants to a company introducing a programme to support home education through schools. This experience introduced them to the idea of publishing and to the opportunities for reaching a larger audience through print. In 1997 Sally wrote her first book, First Hand, which Phill edited and designed. They published it themselves later that year. At around the same time they gathered together a small team of teachers and former colleagues, which they commissioned to provide ideas for photocopiable homework activities linked to the National Literacy and Numeracy strategies for children throughout the primary age range. They published these – 14 books in total – under the name Homeworms in 1998-9. Homeworms were a big success and Featherstone Education became a limited company in 1999.For the next two years the company grew steadily, strengthening its list and establishing itself in the primary sector. It did this through the rapid introduction of new titles, by an early decision to base its production on print on demand, and by collaborating with several other small publishers on promotional initiatives to make its marketing spend go further.
The appearance of the first titles in the Little Books series in 2001 initiated a period of faster growth and led to a refocusing on the early years and Key Stage 1. Little Books flourished and were joined by Little Baby Books (specially written to support Birth to Three Matters), a series on including children with special needs, and the Key Issues series, designed to support Every Child Matters. In 2005-6 the company achieved a £1m turnover.
Sally and Phill worked very closely together, sharing the strategic direction of the company and much of its development. However, they also had their own special interests and areas of responsibility.
Sally continued her training programme, often spending up to four days a week providing courses for groups of early years practitioners. This constant contact with key workers in the field combined with her own wide experience helped her achieve a unique understanding of the issues facing schools and settings, the pressures they feel and the priorities which absorb them. It offered a rich vein of ideas for writing. Sally originated the concepts for and shaped the content of the major Featherstone Education series, including Little Books, and wrote many of them. She edited most of what was published and governed the educational direction of the company. In the course of her training Sally met a number of people who had good ideas but little or no experience as writers. Their manuscripts often required a great deal of work, and Sally and Phill are proud that through their efforts Featherstone Education was able to bring these talents to a wider audience.
Phill’s role was to manage the business from day to day. Most of the company’s activities took place in-house (printing, binding and finishing, invoicing, receipts and payments, taking and fulfilling orders, marketing and sales) and so a lot of Phill’s work was concerned with ensuring that these ran smoothly. He managed the marketing and promotion of titles, including the twice yearly catalogue, human and material resources, much of the PR (including customer relations and promoting the company’s activities and image), setting up the website, finance, accounts and administration. He negotiated special sales to local authorities and introduced and wrote a monthly email newsletter to around 12,000 subscribers. He edited many of the titles in the Early Years Library - First Hand, Foundations for Independence, We Can Do It!, Images of Violence, Exploring Together, Dealing With Feelings, Talking Up a Story, L is for Sheep, Like Bees Not Butterflies, The Atelier – and designed most of them.
Print on demand enabled what was actually a small business (only 10 staff) to keep a large number of titles in print, and to respond quickly to sudden bulk orders. Bigger customers soon realised that they could always obtain quickly large quantities of anything on the Featherstone Education list. Flexibility, the ability to move fast (Smooth Transitions went from idea to finished publication in six weeks!) and Phill’s policy of aiming to make a big impression at key educational events all meant that Featherstone Education punched above its weight in the educational market place. This was recognised by the industry in 2007, when Featherstone Education became the first ever winner of the Education Publisher of the Year award from the Independent Publishers’ Guild.
Featherstone Education is now an imprint of A&C Black, who are committed to continuing and building on the company’s success.
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