UK: Bridgepoint acquires Inspiring Learning

Published 03/11/2016

Bridgepoint Development Capital, investors in Cambridge Education Group and Infinitas Learning, have acquired Inspiring Learning, the parent company to Kingswood, a UK-headquartered provider of residential activity centres.

The group bought Inspiring Learning from aPriori Capital Partners and Ares Management for an undisclosed amount but reports from earlier this year priced the deal at £100m.

Kingswood operates 10 centres around England and one in France catering to mostly British school children and 15-17 year olds participating in the National Citizenship Service.

“It’s going to be a decent injection of funds which means that we can look at our facilities and improve a lot of our centres”

Six of Kingswood’s centres also recruit international students.

“Having spent time with BDC on our Kingswood centres, they have seen with their own eyes our focus on learning outcomes, the positive impact our residential experiences have on developing young people and the fantastic team who are at the heart of what we do,” said Jason Andrews, Inspiring Learning COO.

According to Karen Russell, head of international sales at Kingswood, the management team and brand will remain the same as the company plans to grow the number of centres.

“It’s going to be a decent injection of funds which means that we can look at our facilities and improve a lot of our centres,” she told The PIE News.

“They already have names and brands that are already very successful and really well known espcially in the [international education] industry but there’s not going to be any sort of affiliation. We still are just Kingswood doing what we do best in outdoor educational adventure courses.”

Inspiring Learning also owns a smaller entity, Equity, which provides curriculum linked educational overseas tours, ski trips and sports tours for British students, as well as day camps provider, Camp Beaumont.

BDC is part of Bridgepoint Europe, one of Europe’s largest professional private investors which has also invested in Fat Face a clothing retailer and Prêt A Manger, a sandwich chop chain.

Commenting on the acquisition, director Robin Lawson, said: “Inspiring Learning is a national operator of scale in a sector experiencing solid growth that is capable of growing both organically and by acquisition thanks to its strong capital base and a recognised ability to provide the volume and variety of out of classroom learning experiences required by schools nationally.”

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