Premium international schools operator Inspired has acquired two international schools in Italy and Ticino, the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland.
The acquisitions of IS Como and IS Ticino take the London- and Johannesburg-based group’s network to 35 schools – 27 premium international schools and five early learning schools – teaching upwards of 18,000 students in Europe, Australia, Latin America and Africa.
“These two excellent and growing schools are providing a superb international education in their own thriving communities”
Founded in 2002, IS Como in Fino Mornasco, close to Lake Como in northern Italy, teaches some 300 students from 38 countries.
It teaches the International Baccalaureate curriculum in English, and aims to add the IB Diploma program to its offering from 2018.
IS Ticino is a much younger school, opening in 2014 to teach the IB curriculum to students aged 3-11, making it the only IB Primary Years Programme provider in the Swiss region of Ticino.
The acquisition is part of an aggressive expansion within Europe. It comes less than a year after Inspired acquired a Belgian school and two other K-12 providers in Italy: St Louis School of Milan and International School of Europe Group, which together teach some 3,500 students.
“These two excellent and growing schools, which are providing a superb international education in their own thriving communities to international and local families, will now be able to benefit from the international best practice that belonging to Inspired’s global network will bring,” commented Nadim Nsouli, Inspired’s founder and chairman.
Inspired also plans to open a new school in Rundu, Kenya later this year. Brookhouse Runda will be a sister school to Inspired’s existing Kenyan school, Brookhouse Karen.
The first cohort of primary school students will begin at Brookhouse Runda in September 2017, along with those in their first year of secondary school.
