Destination Education
00:34:52 · Ruth Benny, Scott Crawford
[00:34:52] S0: And I wasn't going to ask, but since we're on the topic of dry reports, Charities Commission and looking at the financial health of a school, I mean, gosh, I spent a few hours last night, but every school that I plugged in, pretty much my AI bot of choice told me that it was in a vulnerable financial position. Is there anything that parents should be looking for? Some easy metrics by which they could evaluate the financial health of a school? Because we have to take this so, so seriously. If we recommend a school to a parent and it closes down in six months or one or two years, that would just be the worst outcome possible. [00:35:40] S1: No, and we're finding that parents are looking at those freely available charity commission reports. I mean there's always the baseline, the school spending more and expending more money than it is bringing in? And sometimes that happens for very good reasons, because they're doing a large piece of capital expenditure and that's all part of the plan. You'd want to look at the reserves to see what the school has in its bank. And I'd be interested too in knowing how much the school is doing in terms of its fundraising. Does it have an active development office? Does it have a commercial function, many schools now will be running separate commercial branches to try and offset fee income, something that we do at Lancing that's the sort of thing that I would be looking for when I'm casting my eye through this.
00:36:30 · Ruth Benny
[00:36:30] S0: It's hard to nail it down though, when you talk about operating reserves, three to six months is kind of normal, which feels not very much actually to me. I mean in a normal business you want at least a year. Which brings me on to the Hokkaido project, Which I didn't know about until I started researching this morning. I mean, obviously, it's very common. Here in Hong Kong, we started seeing those British brands, if you like, whether you call it a badge model or if it's a JV or it's a license or whatever. We've got Harrow, Malvern, Shrewsbury, Wycombe Abbey, about to have North London Collegiate, I mean the list goes on and on and on. You're opening a school in Hokkaido but not exactly as Lancing College. Can you just briefly tell us about that?
00:37:21 · Scott Crawford, Ruth Benny
[00:37:21] S1: Well it's quite an early stage but we have we've signalled an agreement with a school in Hokkaido which is Sapporo Nihon University High School, fantastic school, and they are keen to partner with an international school to open a new international school in Hokkaido. There's lots of regeneration going on in the Hokkaido region, particularly around semiconductor industry, and lots of international families, engineers are moving into the area and they're going to be looking for an international option in their schooling. So we're sort of a coming together of minds to open what I think would be a really exciting and interesting new school there. It's in development, we are working through the nitty gritty, these things are far from straight forward, they take time, but we have a really good partner. I think for us back at the College it will give us another income stream, that's not solely why we're doing it, but it's an important part. But I'm also quite excited about the potential collaboration between our teachers in Sussex and their opposite numbers in Japan and the exchanges that we can have, the sabbaticals we can have between our staff, students moving between the schools, there's lots of opportunity there and Hokkaido is largely untapped in this market. The Governors have looked at a number of different international options over the years and this is the first one that's really spoken to them as right for us and the sort of school that we are and the country and environment we want to work in. [00:39:10] S0: When is it due to open?
00:39:10 · Ruth Benny, Scott Crawford
[00:39:10] S0: When is it due to open? [00:39:12] S1: So If I give a date now then it will probably not happen. It's a sort of two to three year project. [00:39:21] S0: Okay. A couple of schools went to Japan as well in some random places. Obviously, I don't know if Tokyo... Rugby started in... Was Tokyo? Yeah, rugby in Tokyo and then a couple of others. And then they had the unexpected effect that quite a lot of Japanese families then started to look at the real mother schools in The UK. Have you seen some inflow from Japan into Lancing? [00:39:47] S1: We've got 13 Japanese students in the school just now, which is a good number and I think this is added to that. So we're seeing interest. [00:40:02] S0: I said earlier I think you've got a reasonably high number of Hong Kong and Chinese families in Lancing. You're in Hong Kong now to presumably connect with some of those families and prospective families. What do those students bring to the College? I'm sure there's a lot of things that they bring but I in
00:40:02 · Ruth Benny, Scott Crawford
[00:40:02] S0: I said earlier I think you've got a reasonably high number of Hong Kong and Chinese families in Lancing. You're in Hong Kong now to presumably connect with some of those families and prospective families. What do those students bring to the College? I'm sure there's a lot of things that they bring but I in [00:40:26] S1: met some prospective students yesterday who were meeting with me and my Director of Admissions by the way they bring so much enthusiasm for learning, real passion for studying. Music is really important to us in the College and we were lucky yesterday to meet lots superbly talented young musicians, very keen to join our choir and as a school where the chapel is so significant and music making is such a significant part of what we do in that space, having great musicians, academically talented young people is a fantastic thing. Plus, if you're a young person who lives in Hong Kong and you are willing and able to move halfway across the world and adapt to a boarding school in England, you're going to have something about you, aren't you? That get up and go is going to be an asset to our community. [00:41:28] S0: Yeah, know that's an interesting thought. [00:41:31] S1: Because I don't think when I was an airshower I could have moved to Hong Kong.: [00:41:35] S0: My husband moved from Glasgow. But the cynic in me, and as I've told you I've been in Hong Kong for thirty one years, the cynic in me, and I have seen this, it's not always the young person's idea to go to boarding school, is it? Would be nice if it always was.
00:41:35 · Ruth Benny, Scott Crawford
[00:41:35] S0: My husband moved from Glasgow. But the cynic in me, and as I've told you I've been in Hong Kong for thirty one years, the cynic in me, and I have seen this, it's not always the young person's idea to go to boarding school, is it? Would be nice if it always was. [00:41:55] S1: And part of our conversations that we have with young people here is about exploring that. And we'll push back to parents and say if we don't think this is the right thing. And it might not be the right thing right now. And maybe year nine entry isn't right for your son or daughter. And maybe you should think perhaps about year ten or defer until the sixth form. Because the worst thing that can happen is that they come to us and they don't adjust and they're unhappy and they have to move back. And we are confident enough as a school to put the brakes on and say no. [00:42:28] S0: Because you'd rather not take them too early in it not to work out than to say just take your time. [00:42:33] S1: Well we have that duty of care to the young person. [00:42:35] S0: We seen so we call them boomerangs unfortunately, they went too soon, too early and they come back and something's not good. [00:42:43] S1: No. [00:42:44] S0: I need to let you go. I want to... What... Is there a question that you would have liked me to have asked you that I haven't asked you yet? [00:42:52] S1: Gosh. We covered a lot of ground, haven't we? [00:42:55] S0: There something Yeah. You wanna tell? Bye. What's the best question that parents ask to you? [00:43:02] S1: The best question. If only there was one.