An Interview with Mr. Fitzmaurice, CEO of Nord Anglia.

Photos by: Catherine Nicholls

On Wednesday 6th September our intrepid Year 13 student journalists, Thomas Benko and Botond Varga, took the opportunity of a flying visit to interview the Nord Anglia CEO Andrew Fitzmaurice alongside the Chief Operations Officer, Europe, Middle East & Southeast Asia, and Regional Managing Director, Europe, Mr. George Ghantous.

Botond: How did Nord Anglia make the decision to build a school here?

Mr. Fitzmaurice: I was talking to the parents this morning about that, and back then the school site wasn’t really a modern facility and we weren’t entirely happy with it so we were looking for a new opportunity. Back in 2004 we looked at a number of different opportunities for school sites, and I came to this one and I remember looking down at this big green field, which was on a tremendous slope, and I said to them “How are you going to build a school on a slope that steep? Can you construct in that area?” and they said “yes” and that they had a specific design in mind; if you think of the design, the building does follow the slope. And so we went with this site. There was quite a lot of work financing, working on this school; it took a few years but we did it!

Thomas: Yes, and in regard to that, how do you choose the location of a school in general?

Mr. Fitzmaurice: That’s a very, very good question, because the one thing which you cannot undo on a school, is the location. And so the location is incredibly important. I think if I am honest with you, we were lucky with Budapest because we did not do a lot of research when coming here. I mean, now we’re opening a school in China, with a bilingual curriculum and we spend a lot of time looking at the demographics, the drive time, any other schools in the area and any other schools.

Botond: So you mentioned researching the things that are for the benefit of the school and the benefit of the students, but how much would you say the competition in an area influences your decision?

Mr. Fitzmaurice: That, again, is critical. If you are going to come into a new city that you haven't been in before, and there are some very well established schools, and those schools have places, then you have to go in, knowing it’s going to be quite difficult and that it'll be a slow process. It doesn't mean that you can’t do it, but it is going to be quite a slow process to fill that school. For example, there is an area in Switzerland that was well served for schools, with a lot of good schools; we had the opportunity to build a new school there, so we did. And we did quite well, we grew faster than most of the schools on the market. But we ended up having a capacity of about 800 students.

Botond: Now that you mention the capacity, I was looking at the quarterly report, and this said that (in Europe) only 73% of the capacity is utilised. However, at the same time I was looking at some scientific reports on education and the single biggest consensus I found was the teacher to student ratio. So, even though you're trying to maximise your return on investment, I understand it’s a business, at the same time you need to provide a good education. How do you find that equilibrium between the student/teacher ratio and your return on investment?

Mr. Fitzmaurice: That’s an excellent question, you thought about that carefully. For me, the way I think about it, is that a successful school has to work for all our stakeholders. So it has to work for everybody. First and foremost, it has to work for the students; it has to work for our parents; it has to work for all of our staff, and it has to work for the investor. So my job as the CEO, with the executive team, is to make sure that all stakeholders are happy with what’s going on at school. And it’s only if all the stakeholders are happy that your school can be successful. BISB is a great example of that, because if we look at Budapest, we have wonderful student results, the quality of the students is something we’re really proud of, and we have a very engaged parent body. We have a very engaged staff who are getting what they want from their role here, they're getting the professional development they want here, because they want to deliver the absolute best they can to their students. And then in terms of the investors, because the school is successful, we have a growing student body, supportive parents, motivated staff, so then we are able to invest in the initial facility. Budapest is a really good example of where it’s working for all the stakeholders, but it does have to work for everyone.

Botond: It does have to work for all stakeholders, and this question is by no mean implying that it’s not, but I was looking at the quarterly report and the average revenue of Nord Anglia for a European student is 27651 dollars while the average revenue for an American student is 22020 dollars, even though the European GDP per capita is 20000 dollars less than the American. Furthermore it is only a fifth of Hungary’s GDP per capita, wouldn't that mean that you are charging Hungarian students five times more, and do you think that’s justified?

Mr. Fitzmaurice: I think that any school, and we don't talk when we are making public statements, we don't talk about the individual schools, in terms of the way the individual school’s finances would work. But if I look maybe, across Europe more generally, so you look at the European average fee, it’s very much in line with the organisation’s average across Europe. The American average is similar, and our costs in the different places are similar.

Mr. Ghantous: If I may, the European average is skewed by Switzerland. If you took them out of the average, Europe is lower than America. It’s Switzerland that is around 35000.

Mr. Fitzmaurice: But I think the only for it to work, we need a certain cost, we don't own the building, we need that to be a certain percentage of our revenue. So we have a band of who rent works of us. So the rent we pay here, is similar to the US. It tends to match whatever market were up against.

Thomas: So you mentioned you have to keep all stakeholders happy when building a new school, so I feel that politics play a large role in this, such as the revoking of the DACA could affect students in your school. How does Nord Anglia respond to changes in politics such as this?

Mr. Fitzmaurice: I think that that’s something that’s really at the heart of the organisation. Back when I joined in 2003, the organisation was very different in that the majority of the work that we did was actually government contracts. So we ran education systems for the government. We did that in a number of places. The problem with that is that any change in fiscal policy or political work can have an enormous effect on what you're doing, despite the success that you might be having. So, for example, we thought we were doing a fantastic job in Abu Dhabi, we were running a third of government education there, but at the end of a 6 year period, the government decided that they're not going to outsource anymore. So that mean that we had hundreds of people there without a job. So whilst political events can impact us, it impacts us in a much smaller way, we find, than if we were in the government contracting business as we were previously. So how we do is much more down to how successful we are. So if we are going a good job and build reputation, then that tends to be a virtual circle. And that’s much more, we feel, within our control. Additionally, often we help the government to attract investment. So here, Budapest is competing with other cities of where the businesses will be located. So building the infrastructure here, such as schools, actually helps the government.

Botond: Your organisation has the core values: ‘Nurturing ambition, personalised approach, global family’. These are very intangible; it’s very difficult to gauge these. However, a person moving would find it difficult to change schools. So what I want to ask, if the school doesn't have a real incentive to uphold these values, are there any mechanisms of accountability where the teachers and students can have a say in the decisions of the school?

Mr. Fitzmaurice: Absolutely, so coming back to the idea of all the stakeholders, we have something called a balance score card. This represents measures for each of the different stakeholders in terms of, are they getting what they out of the school. On students we can measure that with attendance and grades, for parents we have surveys. We also have an employee engagement survey, we’re asking the staff what they feel about Nord Anglia and what they think year to year.