PLUS News

Over on PLUS, the biggest news concerned the flotation of an unusual business – education consultancy Wey Education. The company is led by education big-wig and former Ofsted chairman Zenna Atkins, who also previously served as chairman at property developer Places for People.

The London-headquartered company, which joined with a market capitalisation of £1 million, has the lofty aim of developing a system of education that can be used to improve standards in primary and secondary schools.

The company, which was formed as an investment vehicle in 2007, recently decided to get involved in the educational services market and hence acquired education concern Zeil Enterprises, the business founded by Zenna Atkins.

In its admission document Wey drew attention to what it called the ‘most significant restructuring of the education sector for 40 years’ by the coalition government, which will lead to greater involvement by the private sector.

The company argues that such changes will ‘create increased opportunities for private sector companies to manage and run state-funded schools at all levels and the company intends to follow a policy of both organic expansion and acquisition to establish a meaningful market share’.

An ambitious and unusual company, Wey plans to take control of failing schools and argues it will be able to provide cost savings through the ‘inefficient’ teaching methods employed by many schools, arguing that it could provide ‘better teaching results at a lower cost’.