10 minutes with

minutes with… 1 Reigate Grammar School

Reigate Grammar School has set up shop in Casablanca on the back of an agreement between the UK and Moroccan governments that makes it easier for British education institutions to launch in the North African country. Headmaster Shaun Fenton shares his school’s expansion plans

First, tell us a bit about Reigate Grammar School Founded in 1675, Reigate Grammar School (RGS) is a coeducational independent school for children aged 11 to 18. The RGS ‘family’ also includes two prep schools for children aged two to 11. Around 95% of RGS students receive offers from Oxbridge or Cambridge universities, or other top, research-intensive universities which are members of the Russell Group, medical schools or leading international universities. While a clutch of A* grades are important, we believe that future happiness and success depends upon qualities of character rather than a fistful of qualifications. RGS was named School of the Year for Wellbeing and Pastoral Care in the prestigious Times Educational Supplement awards last year. The verdict of the Good Schools Guide, the leading reference book for the independent schools sector, was “happy kids, great results”. We’ll take that!

What are the main reasons behind your school’s international expansions? If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a global village to educate a global citizen.

At RGS, we believe that this starts with a network of international schools.

In China, the first school, in Nanjing, has already opened a kindergarten, and further building work has just been completed. It will grow to have a student body of 2,400 students from three years old to sixth form, with boarding provision for many. The second school, RGS Zhangjiagang, is near Shanghai. RGS has also agreed to have a collaborative relationship with a Chinese state school as a “sister school”, Zhixin High School, in Guangzhou. These partnerships offer our British students, their parents and alumni new opportunities to network, develop relationships and form friendships that cross continents, which would never otherwise have been formed. Students and teachers are able to enjoy placements and secondments overseas and the partnerships allow us to have a much more authentic visits programme because they’re based on enduring, long-term relationships. Our teachers can learn with and from teachers around the planet to develop a new paradigm of world-class education.

Creating, for example, Anglo-Chinese links between young people and school communities will promote empathy, understanding, tolerance and friendship – and that must be better than the alternatives. Our world benefits from crosscultural collaboration. Different countries have different curriculum content and some of that difference presents challenges to UK schools working in collaboration. All our international schools follow a British curriculum with A-levels – and most take iGCSEs.

Should we avoid educational partnerships involving countries where there might be controversies about human rights and political freedoms? I totally appreciate the difficult issues here and it is a controversy that challenges the governing body at my school significantly. I believe that more good will come from talking than from silence; from engagement rather than isolation; from education rather than ignorance. For that reason, I choose to see education as a bridgehead.

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Let’s talk about Morocco. Reigate Grammar School is the first UK independent school to open in Morocco. Can you tell us about the plans and partnership there? We will be in partnership with the British International School of Casablanca and then open at least two more schools across Morocco, in Tangiers and Rabat. This is a full and effective partnership, under whichwe will learn with and from each other.

Our Morocco schools will each eventually have an intake of 1,300. Each project is different and fit for purpose. We will not compromise on educational values but we will develop agile operational models. I have always believed that qualities and ethos are more important than structures. Much of the RGS ethos translates to any educational setting as we look to build the school around the child and prepare them to make the world a better place as they move beyond their schooldays.

Can you share the financial model for the expansion? We have a flexible business model, though in China and Morocco it has essentially been via a managed franchise approach where we provide our brand, intellectual property, knowledge, educational services and quality assurance.

What makes Morocco an attractive destination for your school? Morocco is a rapidly developing nation experiencing very good economic growth and a government keen to collaborate and to raise educational standards. Morocco is a good friend of the UK and open for trade and innovation. As a gateway to Africa, it has a strategic role in the region and it is a country with a rich cultural heritage which has identified English as being the language of business. There is an appetite for change and recognition of the quality of British education. Our schools in Morocco will be similar in that they provide a kindergarten-to-sixth form education and are fully co-educational, though pupil numbers in total will be lower than our schools in China.

Morocco’s education market is different to the UK and you must have had to adapt to the local market. How does the price points of the Moroccan school compare to your UK fees, which range between £6,380 and £6,450 a term? There are many ways to deliver quality of education and fees have to match the market conditions. The schools in Morocco will have a lower price point than our UK school but will share our DNA, our quality input for curriculum design, pedagogy, pastoral care, extracurricular programmes, staff training, and more. Our international partnerships have never been about price points so we did not need to alter our overall strategy to accommodate price changes. Our strategy has been about values, partnership and educational quality. We haven’t compromised on that and our partners share the same high standards.

What has been the biggest challenge expanding internationally and what challenges do you foresee your school facing in the near future? We have spent a great deal of time with the senior leadership teams and boards of governors to ensure that we work with good partners on the right projects. We have 350 years of educational excellence and reputation in the UK to protect. And, more importantly, children get

one main chance of an education and we must get it right. We cannot compromise the quality of education for the sake of a poor business model or a lack of alignment between the partners about the importance of educational values around pastoral care, personalisation, the importance of education technology, and more. We have been fortunate to find excellent and aligned partners in Asia and Africa, but that has only come about through painstaking due diligence and through considering many more projects that, on closer inspection, we felt unable to commit to.

Following the partnership between the UK and Morocco, a number of education institutions are thinking about setting up in Morocco. Did this partnership, and political desire to get more British schools to Morocco, play a role in your move? The recent bilateral agreement between the UK and Morocco governments has been extremely important and helpful in moving the project forward. We have benefitted from a new awareness and commitment to the educational and business values of partnerships between the two countries and worked closely with the British Embassy and the Department for International Trade. We are delighted to be the first educational partnership in Morocco and look forward to many more being announced as our two countries work ever-more closely together.

How will the international expansions help Reigate Grammar School financially? There will be significant financial benefits that will help us expand our bursary provision, invest in new facilities for the school and the local community, hold down fee levels for parents, and undertake new partnership activities. In the UK, we are committed to making an RGS education available to those who would benefit, irrespective of financial circumstances. Our partnerships will always be about value measured in terms of life chances and educational opportunities rather than dollars.

In your opinion, what are the key factors for global success for a British independent school? That the children educated in our UK and international partnership schools will benefit. In our international partnership schools, such as RGS Nanjing, the schools will reflect and respect the cultural and political environment of the host country and their added value proposition is to prepare young people to have the skills, attitudes, knowledge and understanding to undertake degree level study in the US, UK, Canada or Australasia. These young Chinese adults will need to have open and enquiring minds, be globally aware, and have a sophisticated outlook. I believe that such qualities of character will benefit the young people, the countries where they take their degree, and their homeland when they return from their studies ready to take on 21st century leadership roles. n