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THE new owners of the British School of Bahrain (BSB) staged a presentation and formerly introduced themselves to parents with a promise of improvements in and out of the classroom.
Inspired, with offices in London, Johannesburg, Bogota and Sydney, operates private schools across Europe, Australia, Africa and Latin America. It has made its first move into the Middle East by buying the Hamala-based institution from GFH Financial Group.
Nadim Nsouli, founder and chairman of Inspired, which boasts more than 30 schools and around 24,000 students on its books, was accompanied by company executives.
“Inspired will look to bring its best global practices to BSB to make the school the best in the region,” he said. “We will also actively evaluate expansion opportunities for the school in Bahrain.”
The presentation was staged at the Gulf Hotel Convention Centre in Adliya last Wednesday at 6pm and by the scheduled start of the session the room was sparsely filled and Inspired got its first Bahrain-style time-keeping lesson as ‘heavy drive-time traffic’ delayed parents on the trek from either work or home.
The snazzy video presentation started around 20-minutes late with seats starting to fill up and the presentation was screened and Inspired spelled out its recipe for success and introduced its top team.
Those included group education director Dr Stephen Spurr, a former Eton College head of classics, headmaster of Clifton College and Westminster School, the latter regarded by many as ‘the leading British public school’, a position he held for nine years before joining Inspired in 2014.
After a flying visit back home he returned to Bahrain again on Monday morning, anxious to get on with the job of taking BSB forward under the Inspired wing.
“We are making this school a priority,” he said, putting the statement into perspective by adding that ‘each new school that comes on board is a priority for us’.
“We want to start laying out a strategy for school improvement for the beginning of the next academic year and we will be introducing some immediate improvements starting, for example, with technology,” he added.
“The Wi-Fi is not reliable and if you want to have 2,000-plus children using computers and educational technology you need to have reliable Wi-Fi, so that’s the first thing.
“Let’s get the infrastructure right and then teach the children, and the teachers in particular how to use educational technology to improve their teaching and improve the learning of the children.
“I need to make sure that the examination teaching for A level, IB and GCSE - for the children going to be sitting those examinations this summer - is as good as it possibly can be to enable the children to achieve the best results they can, so they can have the greatest number of opportunities for their future pathway.
“Then, evaluate the teaching. The quality of teaching is everything.
“And, in the meantime, my colleagues are looking at the facilities to ensure they are going to support the educational vision of Inspired which is based on top academics, performing & creative arts and sporting activities.”
After the presentation Nadim, the good doctor and other Inspired top guns such as Graeme Crawford, Reddam House founder and Inspired Group president, and senior advisor Clarissa Farr, former headmistress of the top-ranking UK girls’ school, St Paul’s, met with parents.
Concerns were quickly voiced over a lack of space for play, the performing arts and sports, the coming examinations and comparisons were made with rival St Christopher’s School.
Nadim was not happy when GulfWeekly starting recording and taking notes of the conversations and the Editor was eventually sent packing to the naughty chair on the side of the stage before being granted one-on-one interviews.
The honest and forthcoming replies were actually pretty-much identical to those relayed to the parents earlier.
BSB is now ‘100 per cent’ owned by Inspired following the deal - valued at ‘up to $150 million’ according to a press release issued before the festive break by GFH, and it holds a long-time lease on the Hamala site.
Nadim, a former partner at Providence Equity Partners, a private equity firm with $40 billion under management, is keeping faith with the current BSB senior team, led by popular head of school, Julie Anne Gilbert, who stepped up from deputy head in 2016 into the hot seat.
That will be welcome news for staff members, pupils and parents who have endured turbulent times in recent years with leadership and staff changes, as highlighted in GulfWeekly, but successfully bounced back with ‘outstanding’ assessments and impressive examination results.
“The senior leadership team will continue in place; as with any school that comes into the group we evaluate the team to see where we can assist and strengthen and we are obviously in the process of doing that, but, as of today, the team will continue,” he said.
“This is a significant commitment from Inspired and we will be here regularly over the coming months and years.
“We are actively looking at options to expand the school because obviously the school is growing and is very successful.
“I have spent my week looking at options to expand. On the existing site there are obviously limits to what we can do but we are looking at other outside potential options to expand the school.”
He said he has been impressed with the assistance he has received in the kingdom, praising Bahrain’s Economic Development Board.
“Bahrain, and the EDB in particular, has been unbelievable with its support, they’ve rolled out the red carpet, they are helping us on every front, they’re being a partner, hand-in-hand with us, to evaluate opportunities to find land, to facilitate any permits to allow us to do business and, so far, it has really been very helpful,” he said.
“We are extremely excited by the potential here, we think it is a great school and we can bring a lot of value to it because we have 24,000 students around the world.
“Of all the groups worldwide, I really think we have the best educators of any group, and that’s the benefit of a group as opposed to another local school - a local school may be amazing but it will never have the quality of the people we have at a group level because they won’t have access to such people.
“And, these people are not just on paper, sitting on the ground, they are working with the educators locally to try and bring some of our best practices to the school and continuously raise standards.
“It’s a great school and we think we can add a lot to it and we hope to be successful in doing so.”
He added that the group philosophy helped with teacher recruitment as well as keeping the brightest young teaching talent within the family who want to travel further afield and gain international experience.
Students could also potentially benefit from exchanges and summer activities and those wanting to finish senior years in the UK boarding to sit their A levels, for example, before university, may see the similarities of moving from one Inspired school to another ‘could help facilitate the transition’, he added.
Julie Anne appeared delighted with the changes: “I have more than been inspired over the last few days and have a lovely feeling that someone really has our back to help the school grow and develop in the future,” she said.
And the parents expressed similar positive vibes. Chairman of the Parent Community Association’s interim board, parent Ellen Van Manen, said: “It’s great news. Inspired seem to be very professional and know what they are doing. We’re waiting to see what happens next.”
