Education Personnel

We identified the opportunity to consolidate the supply teacher market and create the leading provider of education staffing solutions

In 2010 Graphite Capital backed a talented CEO to lead the £45 million management buy-out of Teaching Personnel, the third largest player in the provision of supply teachers and teaching assistants to schools. A year later, Graphite supported the company’s £31 million acquisition of Protocol Education to create Education Personnel and make it the largest company in the sector. The businesses were successfully integrated and a coordinated organic growth strategy was formulated based on the continued roll-out of the group’s national branch network under the two existing trading brands.

The transaction represented an opportunity to benefit from the increasing demand for education supply staff by schools. At the macro level this was being driven by the government’s desire to improve education standards combined with a rising level of pupil numbers. At the same time, with increasingly stringent regulations and candidate vetting requirements and reduced support from local education authorities, more schools were turning to external providers like Education Personnel. The company offered them a range of staffing solutions, a high quality of service delivered at a localised level access to the best and widest range of candidates.

Key Business Achievements

Achieved strong growth in profitability and increased revenues by over 60%

Increased the number of branches from 52 to 67

Created more than 100 jobs, taking the total staff number to 477

Grew the number of school customers by 16% to c.7,200

Placed more than 16,000 candidates per annum into schools

5.8x

RETURN ON GRAPHITE'S INVESTMENT

Business Exit

In May 2014, Education Personnel was sold for £300 million to ICG plc, generating a money multiple of 5.8 times and an IRR of 68 per cent.