I was lucky in that my father worked for National Mutual (today they're AMP Limited), and so I ended up as the first person in my school to have a personal computer.

Without that, and the encouragement to experiment on the machine, I very much doubt I would have ended up as a programmer.

Was it because National Mutual supplied a computer for your father to work on at home or did they have a relationship with a manufacturer?

Both. National Mutual were a major investor in Tandy, at the time. They also expected their staff to take home work, and so supplied every manager with a computer.

Our school had them too, but no one had one at home. We had Apple IIs, Vic-20s, TI-99/4As, etc. Was Tandy just really good at selling into the education channel?