Photo: Wellington College, United Kingdom
Clare Hillman is Director of Licensing for Wellington College International (WCI)
Clare Hillman is Director of Licensing for Wellington College International (WCI), a subsidiary of Wellington College which is a major public school in the UK. WCI licenses the Wellington College brand and provides best practice consultancy to ensure ongoing alignment of vision and values between all the schools. Clare explains how ISC Research supports WCI:
“Our international presence is extremely important to Wellington College, as part of our education purpose first set out in our Royal Charter of 1853: to pioneer and to serve in the field of education. We started on our international journey in 2008 and opened our first school in China in 2011. We continue to carefully grow our network by seeking out strong and aligned partners with whom to establish outstanding Wellington College schools. While this approach certainly limits growth, it fundamentally ensures that every partner and school that we add to our network brings strong symbiotic benefits for the education and the experience that we can provide for all students.
We find our relationship with ISC Research and the information that it provides to be comprehensive, and valuable across different areas of research and stages of development. For example, when you’re first looking into a new market or sector, the growth trends and general market data are very useful, but as you progress, more detailed data such as around staffing, are very helpful also.
ISC Research is really the ‘go to’ in the industry for a broad range of sector data on emerging and established markets. This is powerful in terms of reassurance – for major investment decisions for example – but, as always, this does need to be understood in the wider context and with specific intentions to avoid market over-saturation in some areas.
The market intelligence reports are generally excellent. They are well organised, easy to use, and provide reassurance to us, and our partners, when considering new markets. The benchmarking reports and the specific datasets are also good, for example to sense check a business plan.
I personally find the ‘news’ page on the data portal useful in providing a snapshot of daily news from the international school market. It helps keep up to date even when time is short.
The other thing we find really useful from ISC Research is the direct consultation; that slightly more personalised service. All the ISC Research consultants we’ve met have a wealth of market knowledge and expertise, so we are able to ask really specific questions and to discuss the data in more detail, to understand how it can be meaningful for us and our business.”
