Kunskapsskolan UK
Kunskapsskolan UK is part of Kunskapsskolan Education in Sweden. It is the sponsor of the Academies in the UK run by the Learning School Trust which is a non-profit, charitable organisation.
Its aim is to operate five Academies in England delivering learning through highly personalised education that meets the needs of each student. Our work has spanned a number of years and a range of activities from work at a strategic level preparing the ground for a new Academy to recruiting a Principal.
We helped develop the Expression of Interest for their third Academy located in Ipswich. This document was presented to the Department for Children, Schools and Families and was subsequently approved by the Secretary of State for Education. We then focused on maximising stakeholder engagement. This entailed working closely with the local Member of Parliament, council leaders and officers, business leaders, as well as representative groups.
In Richmond, Kunskapsskolan needed to appoint an exceptional Principal as soon as possible for the new Twickenham Academy. Our search identified a number of candidates who had the necessary attributes. Following our rigorous preliminary interviews, three candidates were short listed to attend final interviews. We arranged candidate visits to Sweden as part of the final stages of the process and facilitated the assessment centre and final panel, following which a successful appointment was made.
Steve Bolingbroke, Managing Director of Kunskapsskolan UK said:
“We realised we needed to appoint an exceptional leader to successfully implement the Kunskapsskolan concept of highly personalised education at Twickenham Academy. We also realised we needed to find an organisation with the expertise to support us in that task. That’s where Pentir Talent Solutions came in. They listened to us, understood what we wanted to achieve and were able to use their networks and contacts to identify potential candidates. Part of the process involved Pentir Talent Solutions conducting preliminary interviews and providing detailed reports to allow us to short list candidates with the qualities we were looking for. Working with PTS gave us confidence that we would make an appointment that was right for us, the Academy and most importantly the young people of Twickenham Academy”.