Super successful inspections, a new Principal and a new Cafe
What a very eventful year 2018 has been. We are now nearing the end but we just wanted to remind ourselves of a few of the high points before we all go off for a well-earned rest.
We have a New website/blog home
We started the year by moving into our new home. We have been building a new website for quite a while now, as we felt the old website, while lovely, was not coping with all the extra demands that modern technology asks of it. We, therefore, had a new site designed and this time we integrated our Blog into the site. We are pretty thrilled by it, and love the functionality, the chat function and all the images and ease of use. We particularly appreciate the versatility of use with mobile devices where in keeping with the increase of mobile device use, websites now need to work on any device – we are thrilled to say – our does exactly that.
British Council Inspection Perfect Score 14/14
This year has seen not one but two school inspections. The first one was from the British Council. With a lot of hard work from all members of the team we were thrilled to hear that we had scored a perfect score of 14 out of 14 available points. This was made even better by knowing that we are joint top language school in the UK. It doesn’t get much better than that.
A New Principal
Lea Brophy became Principal in 2018
2018 saw LSI/IH Portsmouth have a new principal; Lea Brophy. Lea has been with the school from the very start in 1986 and knows the school inside out, having taught and managed right from the start. A talented and skilful teacher and manager, Lea understands the school like no other and is ready and willing to steer us through the choppy waters that our industry, economy and country find ourselves challenged with. With the change of principal came a few other changes, Emma Hoyle became Director of Marketing, Belle Dowber Hawkins became Director of Operations and Sue Hodgson became Director of Studies (Exec).
Belle Emma and Sue also changed position this year.
113 Kitchen and Bar
113 Kitchen and Bar is Now Open
113 Kitchen and Bar menu
Last year, in 2017, very sadly Café Parisien closed its doors for the very last time. We decided we would take the enormous step of changing the concept and integrating it with the school, instead of a separate business. After many months of renovations and redesign, we finally opened the doors of the fabulous
113 Kitchen and Bar.
This was heralded by a very impressive opening night, with the board of directors from NPTC, local councillors and friends old and new. Music was supplied by the principal Lea Brophy and other members of his incredibly talented family.
Opening night at 113 kitchen and Bar with music from various members of Lea’s family.
The Independent Schools Inspectorate
Due to the change in principal it was necessary for us to have another inspection. So in November, we went through the drill that we now know so well. The result – that has now been published is:
“The language school exceeds expectations. At the previous inspection of 18 – 20 October 2016 the language school was found to exceed expectations and the quality of education as judged at that time has been maintained.”
Returning Mums
This year has also seen the return of many of our mummies who went on maternity leave. We are thrilled to welcome back Robyn Brookes (Director of Studies for Pre-sessional), Angela Iesse and Hannah Youell (Marketing) and Emma Grocott (Accounts). The family is back together.
Hannah and Angela
Emma G and Robyn
IELTS Masterclass
Lewis Richards was instrumental in launching our special weekend IELTS masterclasses. There have been a couple this year and we hope to have many more in the new year. So far they have proved to be extremely successful, with the participants expressing real gratitude for the guidance they have received.
Lewis will publish his second book on IELTS in March 2019, so we can see he most certainly has the expertise required to create a course like this. The title will be ‘Build up to IELTS’ and will be available from March 2019.
New IELTS Masterclass Course and Lewis Richards
To see Lewis’ previous book click here: https://amzn.to/2SICiYQ
It has been one roller coaster of a year for all of us here at LSI/IH Portsmouth, but we are about to go on holiday, have a break and we look forward to a star-spangled year Next Year.
We would like to wish everyone who reads our blog