CEO Interview: Dr Pablo Fetter

It's been a year of change for the team at Kings' Education. The school operator's long-serving chief education officer Kevin Stedman retired following health complications, while all three schools in the group's portfolio welcomed new principals.

Also joining the team is Kings' Education's new CEO Dr Pablo Fetter, who brings more than two decades of experience to his role.

Dr Fetter was most recently commercial director and head of investments at Gems Global, and CEO and board member at Gems Africa, where he was responsible for expanding the group's international footprint.

When EJME met with Dr Fetter, he'd only been in the role four weeks, but already seemed to be making big plans for Kings' schools. The Argentinian national, who grew up in a family of teachers, didn't always work in education. In fact, he earned a PhD in computer science, and was a part of the team that developed the first voice recognition system in cars with Mercedes Benz, before moving on to roles with sovereign wealth funds in the GCC.

"Kings' is a company that has an amazing reputation. The tradition of quality education was always intriguing for me. Now that I've joined Kings' I'm starting to understand where that comes from, and compared to everything I've seen before in every other school or education company, there is a deep sense of ownership in each one of the leaders, the teachers, the employees, and a big focus on quality," Dr Fetter states.

EXPANSION PLANS

Considering Dr Fetter's investment experience, and his strategy for growth at Gems, he is naturally looking at expanding Kings' Education's presence in the region.

"The brand of Kings' has amazing potential for further expansion, be it in Dubai, or UAE, or farther in the GCC. I've been surprised by the amount of people who have contacted me in these last four weeks from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, asking to discuss potential partnerships for us to expand. But instead of being reactive and responding to ad hoc requests, I would like to have a strategy to go step by step based on the biggest opportunity for us," he explains.

That strategy involves expanding to the UAE capital first. He revealed to sister title Arabian Business that the group is in early talks to raise US $54 million to open a school in Abu Dhabi.

"We have great potential to expand in Abu Dhabi," he says. "It is premature to talk about dates at this stage, [however] school projects require a lengthy lead time of 12 to 18 months of construction."

In the meantime, Dr Fetter says the group is increasing capacity at two existing schools, spending $27 million on enlarging Kings' School Nad Al Sheba and another $5.3 million on Kings' School Al Barsha. The latter will see its student capacity rise from 1,200 to 2,000 by 2017.

ROOM FOR CHANGE

Dr Fetter is also hoping to use his background in computer science and technology to introduce innovative approaches in the schools.

He states: "Many schools talk about innovation, but the education sector as a whole is very non-innovative. If you look at how a classroom looked 50 years ago and how it looks today, you've got smartboards today and probably more colour. But in the way education is delivered, there haven't been changes to the extent that you've had in other industries. In education, innovation takes longer to be implemented, and I think there's a lot of innovation going on in the ed-tech space.

"It is yet unclear what systems or methods or innovations have the greatest potential, and this is something we are very keen to lead — to look into it, and with a measured approach decide what technologies, what innovations have great potential for our students."

Dr Fetter notes that there is also room to expand the support offered to students with special education needs.

He says: "We are known for placing very strong emphasis on personalised learning and care of our students. We are able to provide customised care for dyslexic children with the use of technology, where we have specialised software programmes. For instance, we would take a child out of class and give them this personalised programme that is fully customised to his/her specific needs with software support. We use similar software for gifted children who have a particular gift, be it in maths, science, or language. We have a separate team that is only focused on learning support, and that can be learning support for children that are lagging in some aspect, or learning support for children who are high performers and will get bored with a standard curriculum or teaching.

"We are using a very innovative approach by using technology — we are bringing more to schools. We are not an online education facility or anything like that, but we use a lot of technology to support the delivery of education in a very personalised and customised way."

Support for students studying English as an additional language (EAL) programme is another aspect Dr Fetter plans to improve.

"If you look at our student population, on average, depending on which school, between 35% to 50% of students are British or native English speakers, and a large number of students in our schools are non-native English speakers. We are keen to give opportunities to children who are not native English speakers to be able to get our great education with personalised, individualised, support for their language needs.

"We are looking at ways of improving what we have at the moment. I think what we have is good, but I think we can do an even better job going forward. If you look at the way that foreign languages are acquired, or the structures that you acquire when you learn a new language, they depend on where you come from. So we are looking at ways to take that into consideration to accelerate the learning curve of children."

It's these changes that he hopes will continue to ensure Kings' schools remain competitive, especially considering the growing number of schools and resulting competition in the K-12 section in the UAE.

"There is a very significant change in the supply and demand dynamics of the private school market in Dubai that is taking place this year and next year. When I first came to Dubai I would be begging principals to let my child join their school. That time has gone and it's going to be gone forever. Going forward, it's going to be a buyer's market, so the power will be with the consumers — the parents. This is going to lead to what I believe is a flight to quality. Parents will have the information in order to make the decisions, and they will have options, and I think they will end up deciding on quality. I believe that we at Kings' have been at the forefront of that strength, delivering great quality.

"For the quality that we offer, we have lots of value. We are, compared to others, quite affordable and have great quality facilities that are equal to none.

"I think there will be a lot of competition at the bottom end of the market, where people are going to start upgrading; they will tend to move up the quality ladder. We are at the top of the quality ladder and will benefit from that," Dr Fetter concludes.