A new private education company has launched its first international school in SA.
Enko Education, which has a presence in number of African countries, unveiled its first school in Ferndale, Randburg, on Tuesday.
The company joins the likes of Curro, Advtech and more recently, Sizwe Nxasana’s Future Nation Schools, which have moved to fill the education gap, by providing schooling to SA’s middle class.
Enko Ferndale comes after Enko received a $2.2m investment from Proparco, a private-sector focused subsidiary of the French Development Agency and Investisseurs & Partenaires (I&P), an impact investment group dedicated to African small and medium enterprises.
Enko Ferndale is also Proparco’s first direct investment in education in sub-Saharan Africa. Regional director for the agency Denis Sireyjol said the initiative illustrated Proparco’s strategy to invest in SA and the rest of the continent.
Enko Education, which is an investment management company, has about seven international schools and one local school in four countries including SA, Cameroon, Mozambique and Ivory Coast.
Enko Ferndale will open its doors in January to pupils from Grades 8 to 12, and will offer the Cambridge IGSCE and the Swiss International Baccalaureate (IB) programme.
The company said the $2.2m investment from Proparco and I&P would go towards upgrading and financing existing schools as well as the launch of new schools in 2017.
Enko also said that since it trained local teachers, it was able to charge on average a quarter of the fees charged by other IB schools in Africa, and planned to enrol 10%-20% of students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds in its schools through various scholarship programmes.
The company is fundraising to develop more than 30 international schools in more than 20 African countries.
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