Two companies in the UK’s international education sector have been listed in a ranking of the top 200 UK private companies that are seeing the fastest growth in overseas sales within a 2-year period. St Giles, in 77th position, is a well known English language teaching operator with school branches in the UK, USA, Brazil and Canada.
And Cognita Schools, a major group of 64 international schools around the world, placed in 113th position – up from its prior ranking of 153 the previous year.
St Giles posted an average 48.5% overseas sales growth in a two-year period ending Dec 12, according to The Sunday Times International Track listings. Mark Lindsay, the group’s Managing Director, informed The PIE News that turnover was £27,705, 065 in 2012 and up again to £29,112,753 in 2013.
The New York school of St Giles helped build its international sales
St Giles is a family-owned business and Lindsay’s daughter, Hannah Lindsay, Group Sales & Marketing Director at the school, explained that the opening of a new teaching centre in New York – in addition to San Francisco – in 2011 was one clear reason for the big rise in overseas business during the two-year period in consideration.
“We would expect our growth to continue as we have just taken over another floor of the building in New York,” she said, “so whereas previously we could teach up to 250 students, now we can cater for 500.”
She added that business in Vancouver, Canada was improving, following close liaison with partner education agencies and incentivisation strategies. “Feedback is really good about our Canada school, which is a ’boutique’ style school so unlike many of the other schools run by larger companies,” she said.
At Cognita (34.49% growth to year ending Aug 13), Chief Executive, Rees Withers, observed that the company operates in both developed and emerging markets (with schools in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Spain, UK, Brazil and Chile.)
Much of the growth in emerging markets is fuelled by urbanisation and “penetration of the local private sector by the aspirational professional classes”
He said much of the growth in emerging markets is fuelled by urbanisation and “penetration of the local private sector by the aspirational professional classes seeking access to western education [who] can increasingly afford to opt out of struggling state systems”.
Withers added, “Cognita’s success is measured in terms of the educational success of the children we serve. This is reflected in the high university acceptance rates among our graduates, including to the top-ranked institutions in the world.”
Strategy consultants OC&C were also included in the top 200 ranking (position 180). Partner Mark Jeynes explained that education consulting (the company recently partnered with Google to produce a report on global search for education opportunities) only represented about 10% of firm-wide revenues.
Nevertheless, he explained that international sales across education had been driven by targeting larger corporate accounts (multinational companies) with cross-border needs. “In addition, we have opened new offices in Poland, Turkey and Brazil in the last 12-18 months.”
