ONE of the world’s leading online trainers is making a wealth of career and life advice available for free to Dorset school pupils.

Chris Croft has trained 87,000 people face-to-face and 18million online, in subjects from time management to negotiation.

He is offering free access for students, starting with those at his local school, Poole High.

He said the idea came up when he was telling his friend Paul Tansey, managing director of Ferndown marketing firm Intergage, that he would like to “put something back”.

“He said, ‘Why don’t you give your videos to Poole High?’ and I thought, why not?” said Mr Croft.

“I’ve made them at vast time and effort and money but it would cost nothing just to give them to the school.

“Because I’ve done really well with these videos, I feel slightly guilty, I suppose, that I’ve earned quite a lot of money from them.”

His courses can be found on the learning platforms LinkedIn Learning and Udemy.

“My leadership course and my negotiating course are the best-selling ones in the world on Udemy, which I never expected,” he said.

“My happiness course has had half a million views and it’s the most viewed happiness course in the world, I think. And so they keep sending me money for that and I just sort of feel slightly guilty.

“I think what’s good about them is I just explain things simply. People don’t want a massively in-depth clever thing, which I couldn’t make anyway. What they want is somebody to explain the basics really clearly and I think I’m good at that.”

His idea was taken up by Debbie Porter, careers coordinator at Poole High, and Rebecca Phillips, strategic lead at Dorset Careers Hub, and Mr Croft spoke in person to introduce the training.

Students get access to Mr Croft’s Udemy courses on “life mastery”; career development; anxiety and stress; and happiness.

Mr Croft, a former engineer and Bournemouth University lecturer, describes his courses as “Engineer Does Meaning of Life”.

“I’ve spent my whole life trying to understand how the world works, how do jobs work, what does a boss want, what makes a person successful. And I’ve been studying it, listening and reading and things for all this time. And half of it is bitter experience because I have failed at lots of things as well," he added.

“The only way to not fail is to never put your head above the parapet and play safe but I’m sort of stupid enough and reckless enough just to go ‘Yeah, let’s do it’."

Schools can get in touch with Mr Croft via chriscroft.com