Voices

Our interest is that more people are interested in studying Spanish and we see that this market is growing. Our focus now is Latin America. We are looking to find good opportunities in many other places.

We want to develop a system to help students get internships while they are studying overseas, not after they’ve finished, to help them come back for short-term training during holidays so they can get to know the Chinese job market.

As we expanded, that also represented an asset for us, which meant we had the interest of schools: we could contribute actively to their nationality mix.

There are 26,000 active agencies worldwide, 5 million arrivals in educational travel and on average less than 200 placements per agent, per annum. The market is fragmented and it is difficult to find quality or the right agent partner.

I think there’s no doubt that more universities are starting to look carefully at offshore provision. It does offer a route to access international markets without falling foul of the visa regime.

We are a very active organisation, not just a shop-front. We always aim to transform our ideas into actions – we are obviously rivals, but above all we are colleagues.

"For now we are not thinking of opening adult language schools in the US, but we won’t rule anything out, including expansion in other English speaking countries"

Increasingly, international students are looking for an ROI on their education and are looking for a better future. It’s one thing to receive their education here, the question is 'then what?'

Quality is a bit of a misnomer; what we are looking for here is creating a level playing field with the bar set at a level that is reasonable. We’re not asking for anything that would be unreasonable.

People can be very quick to think of their competitors as 'who is it in UK, Australia and the USA' but actually the competitors are also very much those players in Singapore, Malaysia and China

Talking to someone in your own country in your own language who has some expertise makes sense to me. And look at the quality of agent websites these days...

Any school has got the right to begin direct recruitment in any country; that’s their choice. But it is our choice with whom we want to work with.

I think we need to re-address the way we define the term ‘migration’. Penalising genuine students seeking a UK education seems at odds given the huge benefit to our economy and the greater reliance universities are going to have on international students

For us, the internet was key to our success. For many younger agencies, schools... it has truly helped them to develop positively.

We understood social media very early. I just had a gut-feeling, I thought, if we want to be a good company we have to be transparent. We have to have the courage to talk about ourselves even if we make mistakes.