EduValue Singapore (EV), part of the EV Education Group, has developed Asia’s First Centralized Quality Assurance (QA) Department for the education sector. EV is the leader in ERF, EduTrust Consulting and QA Frameworks for Private Education Institutions (PEIs) that are regulated by the Committee for Private Education (CPE) in Singapore. EV also does set-up and consulting work for Kindergarten, Enrichment & Tuition sectors, and Workforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ) Training Providers/ Approved Training Organisations (ATOs) sectors, forming an in-depth footprint into Singapore’s education landscape.
What is the EV Blue Ocean Series?
The EV Blue Ocean Series is a guiding philosophy for all our products and services of the EV Education Group. This philosophy challenges traditional notions of consulting, QA, compliance and EdTech by evaluating the market’s needs and innovating products and services that efficiently tackle these issues. All products and services of the EV Education Group follows the Blue Ocean Series pathway. With the novelty of these innovative solutions, we have been increasing awareness and educating the market on how we meet their needs and how adopting such solutions is the right fit.
Below, we share with you how some of the brands in our group put the EV Blue Ocean Series into practice.
EV
EV chose not to go the traditional way of consulting and provision of EduTrust services. We noticed how in Singapore, are outsourcing services of Human Resource and finance but none for QA and compliance. We saw a gap in the market for the QA and compliance outsourcing services for the education sector and decided to provide services to meet these needs. We take a different approach to consulting; We conduct research, integrate the functions of QA, compliance, operations into consultation services and accompany our clients as they execute and implement different stages of their pathway. This is a radically different approach from the conventional consulting. To date, we still find ourselves explaining to our potential clients about our services during sales meetings. Often, these CEOs are amazed that the services we offer even exist.
The digital arm of the group, iCosys, develops digital solutions for the education industry. It is for the industry and by the industry. We noticed and have heard from our clients about the challenges they face when hiring IT tech companies to customise EdTech for their institutions. These tech companies are capable at providing the infrastructure but they lack the insight on how to cater it to the operational, compliance, regulation and other needs that educational institutions require. iCosys works with the EV Education Group to understand how each school operates, the regulations they need to meet, and how to increase the efficiency of such process before designing and customising the digital solutions to meet these needs.
An example of a product that iCosys has produced that is aligned with EV Blue Ocean Series is Digital Certs. In 2018, we noticed that blockchain technology was up and coming. There were also discussions about how it could have applications in the education sector where it could be used by educational institutions to issue digital certifications for their programmes. It was important to iCosys and EV Education Group to produce something that was correctly developed with education sector and its QA compliance in mind. We poured resources and investments into it until it can be perfected because we value function over profits. We did not want to rush out a product that was not ready or did not have the right foundation. This gives us an edge over IT tech companies as iCosys has partnered with a leading QA compliance firm which provides assurance over time.
Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) managed by EV Global
Over time, the EV Education Group created the M&A tracks through EV Global. Traditionally, M&A is usually managed by agents or firms specialising in acquisitions. Using our EV Blue Ocean Series pathway, we adapted the conventional model to focus on the strategies on why clients want to acquire projects in Singapore, what their next steps will be and we assist them in implementation and realisation of their strategies. This full set of M&A services, including turnkey projects are rare for the private education sector but it is something that we want to create.
Upcoming projects
Currently we have two upcoming projects – Knowledge Tap Academy (KTA) and EV Academy. We were involved in the development of KTA, a tuition centre that was led by a very upcoming Physics Tutor. Using our EV Blue Ocean Series model, we have shaped KTA to be a hybrid of face-to-face and digital A Level Physics offerings. It has integrated different tuition centre models to offer face-to-face or online 1-to-1 or group tuition. They also offer all students access to a Learning Management System (LMS) where they can have unlimited practice through assessment questions with video solutions and even ask unlimited questions 24/7 with customised video solutions provided within 24 hours! It is rare that tuition centres have such integrated models where students learn both in and out of classrooms – having face-to-face interactions and learning from teachers and peers, all the learning materials, can ask questions 24/7, not needing to wait until the next tuition class for their question to be answered.
We are currently working on EV Academy to provide the education industry (starting with Singapore) with formalised training for school management and employees with the necessary competencies to ensure smooth operations of the institution. We started this venture because we noticed through EV’s consulting work with schools that they were not inherently strong across competencies to support the school efficiently. We want EV Academy to develop trainings to lighten the learning curve and enhance competencies of schools and by extension, the industry for its growth.
We are currently beta testing this through internal training of EV QA staff through face-to-face trainings and lectures, and a learning management system that has digitised the entire process of becoming a QA associate with questions and videos.
The EV Education Group hopes that by staying true to our EV Blue Ocean Series philosophy our brands can innovate, challenge and revolutionise the education sector. We envision and aspire to drive the transformation of Asia’s education landscape by transforming schools into world-class establishments. We hope that in the next three to five years we can work with governments across Asia and discuss how EV can contribute back to the education industry.
Original article on LinkedIn
Written and graphic design by Gillian Koh, Industry Research Team at EduValue
