Education in The Middle East: Trends and Growth with Shaun Robison

Join us as we unravel the business of education in the Middle East with our special guest, Shaun Robison, CEO of BBD Education and GSM Middle East. Together, we explore the growth and trends in the education sector, delving into the fascinating transition from publicly run schools to private operators running government schools and more.

Shaun shares his personal journey from academia to the real world and sheds light on the complex cycle of public and private spending often seen in the region. We get candid about the disconnect between academics and policymakers and how global politics influences this gap. Discover the implications of the region's population surge on the education sector and the importance of investing in international education. Don't miss this insightful conversation with Shaun and Leisa Grace.

Bio: 

Shaun Robison is the CEO of BBD Education and GSM Middle East. He is an entrepreneurial, senior professional who has delivered exceptional results across the MENA education sector. Shaun has worked with investors, operating companies, consultants, teachers, and government regulators to plan, license and deliver projects and grow education businesses.

 Shaun is passionate about education and entrepreneurship and has an excellent mix of commercial and educational competencies, having published several research papers in academic journals, including a recent one titled “Is the UAE Ready for a Teacher Educator Framework?” https://bcsdjournals.com/index.php/mejrhss/article/view/327

Shaun has also been an Advisor to the Executive Council of Dubai and the Ministry of Finance, Oman, and a major bank in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as well as two of the world’s largest school groups, with over five hundred schools between them.

 Shaun holds a PhD in Education and is also a Governor for IDEA Early Learning Center and is a regular contributor to the Business Breakfast Show on Dubai Eye Radio, the prime-time slot in the mornings.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunrobison/

Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need, to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.

Visit our website https://linktr.ee/teachmiddleeast.

Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need, to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.

Visit our website https://linktr.ee/teachmiddleeast.

Tweet us: https://twitter.com/teachmiddleeast

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teachmiddleeast/.

Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson

Connect with Leisa Grace:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/leisagrace

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leisagrace/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:26

Hello everyone, welcome to this episode of the Teach Middle East podcast. I am Lisa Grace and today I'm chatting with Sean Robison. Sean is an educator well former but now he's into more of the operations and the consultancy side of things. He is the CEO of BBD Education and his knowledge of the region is expansive. So I'm deviating from my normal pedagogical topics and really diving into the business of education, the growth, the trends. So if you're into the business side of education, this is the podcast episode for you, so keep listening.

Speaker 2: 1:10

You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast connecting, developing and empowering educators.

Speaker 1: 1:20

Hi Sean, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 3: 1:23

Hi, lisa, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:25

It is a pleasure, hard mind to catch Very, very busy. What have you been up to? Introduce yourself to the audience, please.

Speaker 3: 1:32

Thank you, lisa. So yeah, i'm in my 15th year here in the UAE, 15th academic year, so I've kind of started out in Al Ain and Abu Dhabi training teachers. As you mentioned, i am a former educator as well And I've worked regionally across the Middle East. So I've worked in Saudi, in Egypt, in other places, qatar as well, And more recently we've worked in India, in Jakarta and Hong Kong as well. We're doing quite a bit of work in Hong Kong at the minute.

Speaker 3: 2:00

So I'm currently CEO of BBD Education. We're an education management consultancy. We work with investors, we work with governments around the Middle East and also schools as well, and we work a lot on the investment side, often bridging relationships between investors and educators. I completed my PhD on that very topic, started back in 2012, and captured my learning from 2012 to around 2018, 2019 in the education sector.

Speaker 3: 2:31

And BBD was acquired last year by Kansas Offices Learning, which is a large US operator, and we established our operating entity here in the Middle East. So we have BBD, which is the consulting arm, and then we have GSM Middle East, which is our operator entity, and we continue to deliver projects in the region. We just finished a project with the Ministry of Finance in Oman, where we were repurposing 42 school buildings. I've worked as an advisor to the Executive Council of Dubai on the Future Schools project here, designing a school for the future for His Highness. And then we've also worked on the Human Capability Committee in Saudi Arabia as part of the raft of changes taking place there. We cover all aspects of the education sector, from investment to land to build, all the way through to the education and the operating side and everything else in the middle.

Speaker 1: 3:26

Yeah, i think that's what makes you perfect for this episode is because of the wide gamut of experience that you possess. So now I should be calling you Dr Sean. So, for our listeners, i've known Sean since PPP days in Al Ain, because that's where I work as well. So now, dr Sean.

Speaker 3: 3:44

I don't take the title Doctor, so I want to just qualify that I don't take the title Doctor, because I feel like there's a huge disconnect between academics, policymakers and the real world And my own experience of doing my PhD exemplified that And I wrote about this quite extensively in my thesis as well And I think that there needs to be a kind of revisioning of these lofty titles that people throw around, when quite often the people who throw the titles around can't live with the changes or the impact that they put into place. And without getting too political, you know, with Brexit in the UK and with all the global political changes happening around the world I think that having these titles doesn't necessarily bring people closer together And although I happily throw the title around every now and again at a barbecue for a cackle, i don't use the title at all with my peers in the education sector.

Speaker 1: 4:41

Yeah, i agree with a lot of what you just said, but because I don't want to turn this podcast episode into that kind of podcast episode, i won't even dive into some of that, because I do see that disconnect between academia and what's actually happening in the real world if I want to have a better world. But let's talk about the education sector. Over the years you must have seen a lot happen, from PPP to everything. What are some of the major changes you've noticed?

Speaker 3: 5:13

Yeah, it's a really good question. To start with, i remember, and you might recall this as well the first PPP project was pretty big. It was huge. The first generation of Western teachers working in government schools in Abu Dhabi happened in 2009. I remember when that happened and it was such a huge cultural change. It meant that there was a huge cultural project as well as an economic project in Abu Dhabi at the time. We've kind of come full circle now where we're seeing private operators operate government schools. Coincidentally, this has happened when the price of oil has been high and therefore government spending on education has also been high.

Speaker 3: 5:58

I've been through this cycle in different countries in the UAE, oman, in Saudi, where government spending is typically high and then private operators operate the government schools. We see these kind of shifts between staff in the private sector and staff in the government sector. This puts a lot of pressure on the private sector itself because of the changes from private to public. If you've been around for any length of time, as you have in the UAE, you know that it's a cycle and at some point it can't continue. I expect this cycle of public and private to continue for the next couple of years, but I don't expect it to be a continuous cycle for the foreseeable future. The big question is why is this happening and why are private companies operating public schools? That's largely because the public systems are not achieving the levels desired by the governments across the region. The need to change, the need to educate the mass population quickly, is still the same. It was there in 2008, and now it's still there today. With each cycle of public-private partnership, there are improvements, achievements that do happen. The increase in the English language proficiency happens, arabic language happens, but of course, you can't educate that many people in such a short space of time and get the desired impact. I think this will continue.

Speaker 3: 7:24

Now, one of the pressures from this and this is a region-wide pressure is that schools now government schools are typically aligned to US curriculum standards. What this means is that private schools that are educating, should we say, domestic communities or native communities, are seeing a shift and they're seeing pressure because their communities are being incentivized to move back into the government sector. So we're seeing quite a lot of this happen across the region, not just in the UAE, but in other places as well, and that's because the government systems are aligned to map assessments and to US standards. That didn't happen before. Everything was all under the UAE and then there was some curriculum innovations happening. But what this means is that US curriculum schools are under pressure, especially the mid-market schools, because those were the schools that were educating the parents who wanted a private education, but with US curriculum standards.

Speaker 3: 8:20

Now this change is not unusual globally, because we've actually seen a similar trend in the UK education sector where TAB and TSC private schools the kind of leafy private schools in the middle of nowhere that no one's heard of we've seen parents shift from those private schools back into the state sector because the state sector has seen improvements And in certain areas of the UK grammar schools are still in existence. So for some parents it's a question why would I pay £30,000 a year when I've got a really good state school in my community? So it's a global challenge. But I would say we're in the thrust of another cycle at the moment across the region where governments are trying to privatise the public sector or are privatising, should I say, in order to raise the standards as quickly as possible, because they know that they have to educate and educate the next generation for the workforce. Almost all these changes in technology are happening at the speed that no one can keep up with.

Speaker 1: 9:19

Yeah, and I tell you, what really drives this home is the fact that a lot of the government jobs Used to pay School fees. So let's say you're a local person, you would get an allowance for school fees on top of your salary. That's now being withdrawn. What kind of pressures that having on the private school sector now, especially that they're encouraging you listen, these are charter schools. Send your kids there. What's that doing?

Speaker 3: 9:46

Yeah, it's a huge pressure. It's a huge pressure, like I said, schools that are US curriculum and educating the native populations of those countries. They're looking for ways to incentivize or to keep their parent body. Unfortunately, that it is going to drive some schools to shut. That's the nature of how this happens. It's unfortunate, but it is a reality and it's a real test on private sector Competition remaining, you know, sharp for your audience, delivering on your promises being more than just your website jargon, actually achieving academic outcomes. Now, the flip side is, if parents choose to go back to public sector schools, they have to see a tangible reason why there has to be outcomes there as well, and my assumption is that, you know a large percentage of people will shift to government sector schools, but the ones that are truly driven to have a private sector education will remain, because the reasons go much beyond curriculum and go much beyond just academic results. There's a whole raft of other reasons why parents choose private education.

Speaker 1: 10:53

Yeah, i do agree with you with the fact that this mid-market set of American curriculum schools feeling the pressure. Where are the opportunities then? So let's think private, where are the opportunities?

Speaker 3: 11:06

Yeah, so I think at the moment if I separate out Dubai and Abu Dhabi. To begin with, at the minute Dubai is seeing a real surge in the population again. Schools are around 90% full in terms of capacity. You're seeing new schools emerge in communities that people didn't consider a while ago. You're seeing travel times reduce. So the opportunity really in somewhere like Dubai is that you can enter the market now with a premium school and You can be very, very convinced that you will have waiting lists and you will have a high demand Because the population is increasing again and the city is expanding again, which is putting the existing operators into a luxury position of having a lot of parents wanting to get into their school. But then you're also seeing new communities emerge because of the relationship between rent housing and schooling Now the minute, rents are really high. So what's happening is residents are being forced to revisit where they live and they're often Moving further out of town and this is forcing school operators to say, well, actually is there a new school, or is there a school Within all of these emerging communities? so, looking at places like Jabal Ali down by the expo site, looking at places as far as the Al Qaeda cycle track and places out there now with the mid-market segment.

Speaker 3: 12:29

Unfortunately and this isn't a dig at American education because I think we throw around terms like American and British Too easily in the education sector Unfortunately American tweaking schools quote-unquote American have been very low achieving For the past 10 to 15 years and quite often these weren't accredited American curriculum schools. There were schools that were essentially calling themselves American but they're not really doing a curriculum as such. So the regulators have looked at where those schools have achieved in the international rankings and Unfortunately American curriculum schools come out second bottom, slightly ahead of ministry education private schools. So if a real American curriculum operator were to come into the market in Dubai and offer a mid-market education But truly aligned to American standards, then obviously they would be competing with the bulk of the sector. That isn't currently doing that. Now. I say that despite the fact that a lot of improvements have been made in Dubai already. You know the international benchmarks for Dubai are pretty, pretty strong as a whole and I think everyone's really pleased with that.

Speaker 3: 13:39

Now in Abu Dhabi we're seeing again a lot of demand for school places in Abu Dhabi. There's a huge demand for Indian curriculum schools again in Abu Dhabi, whereas slightly just after COVID a lot of Indian parents left Abu Dhabi and went back to India, understandably. But now we're seeing a huge demand again for those schools and we're seeing again communities such as Khalifa City A You know, the Al Reef compounds were seeing those communities Full again with parents. We've seen competition increasing and we're seeing the city expand. So I think the opportunity really within Abu Dhabi is not to come in with something that is aligned to the American System right now, because I don't think that would be wise given the chart of school project. But there's still a huge demand for IB education, cbse education and then obviously that mix either UK and IB or CBSC and IB in the later years. Those curricula are still very much in demand.

Speaker 1: 14:35

Yeah, i actually noticed the uptake in Abu Dhabi because I'm based in Abu Dhabi. Dubai is on a whole other level, but I've noticed Abu Dhabi has really started to expand again. But let's take it a little bit further afield in terms of the Saudi market What's happening there?

Speaker 3: 14:54

Yeah, so the Saudi market is again. It's booming at the minute, but it's four times as big as the UA and Change is happening quite rapidly. Overnight there, societies will change. Social and cultural changes are happening. It's real, it's happening. It's happening as quick as it happened here in the UA back in the day.

Speaker 3: 15:15

There's a demand for international education.

Speaker 3: 15:17

However, a lot of operators have come into the market and they've actually misjudged what the market is looking for.

Speaker 3: 15:24

So there's been a huge rush of International, uk branded schools within Riyadh, but they haven't enrolled the sorts of numbers that parents were expecting or that the market was expecting, and that's because they've misjudged the importance of Arabic and Islamic for Saudi nationals.

Speaker 3: 15:45

Now, for Saudi nationals, us higher education is much more in demand than UK higher education. So in the same way that the domestic population, saudi population, has selected us curriculum schools, that's the same in Saudi as it is in the UA, but in terms of higher education destination, the US is the preferred choice. So a lot of the UK premium operators that have gone into the market have not seen huge enrollments And that's because they've gone in with this approach, that where this UK premium Brand and we're going to get a pathway for university for Saudi students. Well, that's not necessarily what Saudis are looking for, and you have to bear in mind that the non Saudi population in Saudi is tiny compared to the UA, with a bulk of the population in Saudi Arabia is actually Saudi nationals. So there's a different set of categories and segments of education in Saudi that are slightly different to here in the UA, which means you have to be very, very careful about what type of school you offer and the price point as well.

Speaker 1: 16:49

Yeah, i actually Saw recently that there were quite a number of premium British prep schools, private schools, that are going into Saudi And I wondered as well How many expatriate British Nationals are there to take those places and is it really of interest to Saudi? I actually saw that and thought that, but because I'm not, you know, so inclined, i just dismissed it. But let's think a minute about the fact that now is a boom time For private schools, especially here in the UAE. But they need to also Differentiate themselves. They can't all just offer the same things. What's the demand for innovation and differentiation? What are you seeing?

Speaker 3: 17:34

Yes, i think the key thing to bear in mind is, as educators, we often use these terms innovation or, you know, tech or these kind of words that we understand, industry-wise, what those assumptions are. Okay, but the reality for parents and I worked on a project in Saudi in 2018, and the project was aimed at increasing literacy within the Saudi family homes and getting Saudi fathers to read to their children Right, something as basic as that. But Saudi society is very private, so when you start with a big question like how do we get Saudi fathers to read to their children at home, you have to then start to unpick all of the societal Pressures that take place at home. Okay, now for Saudi parents, and This is illustrated within the international testing scores within Saudi Arabia, literacy and numeracy are still the biggest driving factors for Saudi parents, right, so English language development in order to get their children to very good universities in the US, and There's still a demand for schools that offer Different things, like the arts and sport and things like that.

Speaker 3: 18:51

Those things are very underserved in Saudi Arabia. You have the traditional embassy schools that still typically serve. The British population of Riyadh typically goes to the British School of Riyadh. The American community in Riyadh typically attend the American Embassy School in Riyadh. But when you look beyond that, private schools are quite often lacking the work, the employability skills, skills for entry, different sectors, technical skills, vocational skills. So there's still a huge demand for those things.

Speaker 3: 19:25

But the major challenge in doing that is crystallizing that into an investment plan for investor to take a risk, to be the first one to do it.

Speaker 3: 19:36

Because if quite often, when you can see a gap in the market and we deal with this a lot with the regulators and with investors sometimes the best or the brightest ideas or best kept as ideas, because if you're going to advise someone to invest $30 million in a new school and that new school is going to be the number one music school in Riyadh, then what you have to try and really explore is do parents want a music school so much more than wanting the fundamental basics of education with a bit of additional enrichment on top?

Speaker 3: 20:09

And quite often as educators we get caught up in let's make a transformational change and we use all these words and jargons, but quite often marginal change. When you're coming to making system changes in a sector, it's much better and it's much more manageable. So I would say, for an operator looking to go into Saudi, you could go into the sector with a really strong offering of getting the basics, the core, right, and just offering an additional bit of enrichment on top and just finding the right location for that type of school. That would be solid. It's not sexy, but it's what the sector needs, and if more people took a more measured approach to growth, i think we'd be in a much stronger position.

Speaker 1: 20:50

Yeah, that really does answer it, because I was wondering, with all those bells and whistles that were being advertised, i'm like are parents really interested in that Before we go away from Saudi? when it comes to marketing to parents in Saudi, what's effective?

Speaker 3: 21:09

Yeah, good question. So it all depends on the community number one. So you know, when you look at the major cities in Saudi, so Riyadh, daman and Jeddah, they've all got different communities which all have very different needs. Okay now, so a lot of the UK branded schools. Obviously they're very keen to share their brand This is our history of our school in the UK or elsewhere and to sell the academic results of those things. Right, which is fair, cop.

Speaker 3: 21:38

But the most important thing for any new school launching, in any sector, is to engage the school leaders and the people with the community that they're serving. And you have to really get into the messaging and the psychology and the emotional needs of parents. Quite often schools are offering things that don't resonate to parents at all because they're kind of stuck in the abstract and not just thinking about the practical things that parents want in a school. So when you launch a new brand we've opened 17 schools in the last six years, well, and we've gone through this process year upon year with different investors and with parents And unless you really engage with parents and find out what parents really want, then you can just remain in this abstract place and end up with no students For the past two weeks. I'll give you an example.

Speaker 3: 22:29

We've been doing focus groups in Dubai on bilingual education because we're exploring bilingual education, specifically Mandarin and English schools at the moment, and we've done a lot of research. I've been to Hong Kong. I've been looking at bilingual schools. It's been amazing. I have my own set of assumptions, but once I met the parents and actually heard from the parents direct themselves, it's completely changed my perception about actually what is needed in the sector.

Speaker 3: 22:57

And unless you engage with the key people and unless you actually get to grips with the demographic factors that affect parents' decision making, you can end up with a really good idea, but when you start to implement it it can be a disastrous and very costly project Because parents are often looking at things like transport, travel time, working around their work-life schedules, all of those things. And one of the biggest changes we've seen in the UAE since COVID is that the majority of parents, majority of families, are now two working parents, and we saw before COVID I would say it was maybe a 50-50 split. Now I would say to 90% families have two working parents. So that quite often means that schools either have to be close to work or close to home but then offer additional things after school in order to cater for the parents' working schedule. So I think those factors often supersede innovation or supersede curriculum or other things, because it just comes down to a practical reality that parents need the children catered for within a set time frame at a certain price.

Speaker 1: 24:08

Yeah, no, you're right. Like it trumps all the bells and whistles. If you have to get halfway across town and it's not logistically possible, forget the bells and whistles. He's going to the school or she's going to the school 10 minutes away. It's just as simple as that, exactly. We're winding down, sean, but I want to know, in your future Crystal Ball, where is it all going, especially for Dubai? Where is it all going?

Speaker 3: 24:33

Yeah, i think Dubai will continue to see steady growth of private schools, so I think there will be I don't know. My prediction is five to seven new schools per year for the next 10 years. I think people from around the world who didn't really consider Dubai as a destination before COVID are now looking at Dubai as a genuine destination, and different communities have moved here in the past year. We're seeing a lot of people move from the Far East to Dubai specifically, so we're seeing these kind of new communities emerge with new demands on education. Now, i think this is a really positive thing because it forces everybody, including the regulators, to look at you know. Do the regulations really enable us to achieve what we want to achieve for the next five years, for the next 10 years? So I think it's a really healthy thing to see that. I think we'll see more consolidation of the market. I think we've already seen that in the past year, where, you know, the amount of operators has reduced but the amount of schools has grown. So I think that will continue And, yeah, i think Dubai will continue to have, you know, one or two motivational projects in the future that are carefully planned in order to continue to push the boundaries of education.

Speaker 3: 25:52

I think Abu Dhabi will be a little bit slower in terms of growth, but it will continue to grow nevertheless. But I think as a city we'll see much more development happen off island, which obviously we already are, but I think that will happen at a quicker pace. So I think we'll see more communities emerge as far out as Al-Shamka, al-shwamek and all of those areas. I think we'll see more private housing developments out in those areas.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Yeah, it does feel like a boom and a good place to end the podcast, because it's a positive thing And I do see that I mean people are interested in connecting with you if they've heard the podcast. Put all your links. I mean maybe you're just whatever contact you provide in the show notes. But thank you, sean, for being on the podcast.

Speaker 3: 26:38

No worries, my pleasure Anytime.

Speaker 1: 26:40

Yeah, it's good to talk business and it's good to hear what's happening in Saudi. I had some inclinations but I wasn't quite sure and you've confirmed them, So I'm quite happy to have confirmed those. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3: 26:51

Good, all right, i really appreciate it. You're welcome.

Speaker 2: 26:56

Thank you for listening to the Teach Middle East podcast. Visit our website teachmedaleastcom and follow us on social media. The links are in the show notes.