Tribal Buys Education Specialist

Education and training solutions provider Tribal Group plc has completed the acquisition of Redhill, UK-based i-graduate (International Graduate Insight Group Ltd), which provides education benchmarking and student experience research. The deal is worth up to £7.5m.

An initial £2.86m is payable on completion, with earnings-related payments carrying the total price to as much as £7.5m by December 2015.

i-graduate, which was founded in 2005 by Will and Lindsay Archer, works with over 1,200 education institutions in 24 countries to provide evidence-based information on education experience and outcomes across higher education, further education and schools markets - using feedback from more than 1.3 million students. The company will now join Tribal's Services business and strengthen its existing evidence-based analytics offering. CEO Will Archer will continue to lead the i-graduate business and will lead integration of its services with Tribal's existing financial benchmarking and analytic capabilities.

i-graduate also includes The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, which consults on trends and best practice in HE institutions worldwide.

Bristol-based Tribal has 1,300 staff and is listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. CEO Keith Evans says the buy will strengthen his firm's capabilities in qual and quant technology-based benchmarking and analytics, which he says are key to the company's goal of providing customers with 'evidence-based systems and solutions to support the ongoing improvement of educational outcomes'.

Will Archer says the deal will help i-graduate accelerate the development of its products and services and enhance its offer to educators worldwide.' He adds: 'Our work with educators around the world has reached a scale and a significance that requires an advanced level of technical skills, platforms and support.'

Web sites: www.tribalgroup.com , www.i-graduate.org and www.obhe.ac.uk .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.