Last month, I was honoured to speak at the IPSEF Global 2025 Conference in London.
This annual gathering brings together high-profile speakers from education specialists to legal experts, headteachers to investors all committed to helping schools with a British curriculum establish themselves successfully overseas.
Held at Woburn House, this one-day event offered a rich mix of networking opportunities and deep insight into current trends in international education. The focus shifted across the globe, with panels discussing school expansion in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and the USA. I was pleased to join the Africa panel, invited by IPSEF and Alex McGrath, founder of Castlegate Education and a former CET trustee, to share the wider implications of opening private schools in Africa.
What stood out to me was the Asia panel’s emphasis on the importance of integrating local culture into newly established international schools. It resonated with my own message. In Africa, just as in Asia, if British schools are opened without embedding local culture, language, and context, they risk alienating students from their communities. Graduates may grow up with strong British values, yet feel disconnected from their own societies, contributing to the rising trend of skilled youth migration in search of opportunity abroad.
Alex began our session by sharing the strengths and challenges of opening schools in Africa, many of which echo those that we use at the Commonwealth Education Trust (CET). In Nigeria, for instance, where over 70% of the population is under 30, there is an urgent need for better schools and stronger educational infrastructure. Opening a school in such a context could be part of the solution but only if done with purpose.
This is where the role of teachers becomes paramount.
During the discussion, I had the opportunity to speak about the local educators who form the heartbeat of education systems across the continent: Sera, in Zambia, who had little access to leadership training until a partnership with Gordon’s School through our programme; Thandi, in South Africa, who was discouraged from applying for a promotion simply because she was a woman; and Kelechi, in Nigeria, who describes the “thirst for knowledge” amongst teachers, despite the absence of opportunities for professional growth.
Nigeria alone faces a shortfall of nearly 200,000 primary school teachers. This is not merely a statistic it is a call to action. The Commonwealth Education Trust, through our digital platform Teach2030, is working to address this gap by providing scalable, affordable teacher professional development across the Commonwealth. Our work enables private schools to go beyond profit-making, offering them the tools to invest in the communities they enter, by employing and upskilling local educators and creating a pipeline of high-quality teachers.
Ten years ago, I walked away from a permanent teaching post disillusioned by how education had shifted from children to spreadsheets from values to metrics. But today, through initiatives like Teach2030, I see hope. If international schools choose to build capacity from within by training, empowering and retaining local teachers they can contribute meaningfully to both educational outcomes and economic development.
In Africa, a school can be more than a business. It can be a catalyst for sustainable, community-rooted change. This, perhaps, is the model of international education we need for the future.
If you are a UK or international private school and want to read more about how your school can make an impact in Africa and beyond, click here.
