Eleven Plus Exams CEO shortlisted for BESA’s Inspirational Leader Award 2025
Our founder and CEO, Ilesh Kotecha, has been shortlisted for the Inspirational Leader 2025 award in this year’s BESA Awards.
Eleven Plus Exams are delighted to see Ilesh’s contributions to his companies, team members, and to education as a whole, recognised.
The British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) is the trade association for the UK’s educational suppliers sector. The BESA Awards celebrate leadership and innovation across this sector. They recognise the achievements of those who set the standard for excellence in education.
The Inspirational Leader Award recognises CEOs, managers, and industry leaders who bring out the utmost potential in their teams, offering invaluable insights, providing clear guidance, achieving remarkable outcomes and pioneering industry advancements.
Leading Eleven Plus Exams to Success
Ilesh has always been directly involved with every aspect of his businesses. He leads by example, with an infectious determination to succeed.
Arriving in England as a Ugandan refugee, Ilesh describes how access to high-quality education was transformative to his own life. His businesses have ultimately stemmed from a passion for empowering students on their own educational journeys, and a commitment to shaping and defining the future of tuition. Ilesh has worked to blaze a trail in the 11+ industry and pioneer new and effective ways to continually help parents and students best navigate this area of UK education.
20 Years of Commitment
Ilesh first launched elevenplusexams.co.uk in 2004, to help his own son achieve his dream of attending a grammar school. He intended to use a small forum to share 11+ practice questions remotely but the site steadily began to grow in visitors, due to other parents finding its online content extremely useful. It is now the UK’s largest free advisory site for the 11+. It formed the basis of his two companies: Technical One Ltd, creators and providers of education technology, and Eleven Plus Exams Tuition, an award-winning tuition company which teaches over 1000 students each year.
Ilesh has now led Eleven Plus Exams for 20 years. He still teaches alongside our tutors and inspires and guides all of our staff towards providing the very best 11+ tuition and tuition resources.
The winners of the BESA Awards 2025 will be announced at a ceremony in London later this year.