The Education Business
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2013
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Education and how to make a profit from it is the focus for Evan and his three guests this week - each of them business leaders in the learning sector.
From low-cost private schools in Ghana to no-frills law courses and a University of Liverpool campus in China, our guests will share their business lessons on how to build a reputation and how to price a good education. They'll also talk about the challenges of taking on traditional, public institutions as well as the technological advances that look set to transform learning over the next 20 years.
As usual, The Bottom Line cuts through confusion and spin to present a clearer view of the business world.
Guests this week are Carl Lygo, Chief executive of BPP; Professor Sir Howard Newby, Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool and Professor James Tooley, chairman of Omega Schools.
Series producer: Helen Grady Series editor: Innes Bowen Series researcher: Ben Carter.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading this program from BBC Radio 4. This week on the bottom line, |
| 0:05.9 | Evan Davis talks to three business leaders from the world of education. Hello and welcome to the |
| 0:12.6 | programme. We're looking at the business of education today. What, I hear you say education isn't a business? |
| 0:19.3 | Well, in fact, there are quite a few people |
| 0:21.2 | treating it as though it is, not just a business, but a global one at that. We'll ask whether |
| 0:25.6 | it works. And we have three guests managing educational services. We'll spend a few |
| 0:30.9 | minutes with each to hear what they're up to. And first up is James Tully, who's chairman of a |
| 0:36.0 | company called Omega Schools, operating private schools, and James, these are in Ghana in particular. |
| 0:44.0 | Yes, Ghana. We're also moving into Sierra Leone and probably across other parts of West Africa. |
| 0:48.6 | So tell us how it started. I'm a professor at Newcastle University, and I've been doing research about low-cost private schools for a decade. |
| 0:56.3 | These are schools in the slums, in poor areas of Africa and Asia. |
| 1:00.9 | And when I first, as it were, discovered these schools for myself, I immediately saw, yes, they're better than the government schools that the poor families are not sending their children to, but of course they |
| 1:11.3 | can be improved. And one way of doing that would be to create a chain of these schools. So we have |
| 1:16.3 | a chain of schools. We can raise investment. We can invest in R&D. We can get economies of scale. |
| 1:22.4 | And so that's what, just about four years ago, the Ghanaian business partner, Ken Donko, I started. |
| 1:27.8 | Omega schools. It's grown to about 20 schools in three years. We're building 20 more now. |
| 1:33.0 | We've grown to about 300 schools in the next five to seven years. |
| 1:36.8 | Well, take us through the customer experience of these schools, if we can use that phrase. |
| 1:40.9 | How much does it cost? |
| 1:42.3 | They cost about 30 to 40 p per day, but that includes lunch, uniform, books. |
| 1:51.2 | Parents pay daily, and that covers everything. |
| 1:53.7 | There's no hidden costs. |
... |
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