Christmas Baby on the Way

Stop Press:  15/12/14
Nicki P is now the proud mum of Josef Robertz.  Born at 7.30 this morning weighing 7lb 9oz with a full head of black hair.  All healthy and happy!

Our 'Superb Senior Teacher Support' Nicki Pring is leaving to have a baby!  Nicki started here five and half years ago and has made a huge impression on everyone, supporting all the GE teachers with advice and materials.  A brilliantly gifted teacher and very popular with all the staff, she will be massively missed.  She said 'I am very sad to leave, but incredibly excited at the prospect of being a mum, and is waiting for the best Christmas present anyone could have' - her baby is due of Christmas Eve!

From left: Leanne, Ross, Andrew and Nicki.

Bye Nicki, good luck and look forward to seeing you back sometime next year.

A Change is as Good as a Rest

English UK regularly gives great training opportunities to its members, and recently a group from LSI Portsmouth went to participate in discussions about Change Management. As you can see from the photo not only did they learn a lot but they also appeared to have a very good time!

From left: Andrew Edwards, Angel Ma, George Pickering,
Nawaz (from Liverpool), Rosie Ford, Lea Brophy

Happiness is the Key - LSI Principal Andrew Edwards in the News (and on screen)!

Not only has Andrew appeared in a great article in the EL Gazette this month but he has also made a brilliant little Quick Tips video for our students to help them improve their English.

Our principal Andrew Edwards is in the EL Gazette this month, talking about what he thinks makes a successful business and life.  It's a really nice article, do read it!

If you would like to read the article in a more friendly manner - click here.

Down Under - Andrew in Australia

Life as the principal of a large international language school is very hard; pressure, stress, decisions, problems, to name but a few.  Our poor principal Andrew Edwards has had more than his fair share, and added to that he was forced to go to Australia recently for the annual IALC (International Association of Language Centres www.ialc.org ) workshop in Brisbane.  

While he was there he attended about 40 meetings with major international agencies from all around the world, (Switzerland, Korea, Italy, Turkey, Peru, Thailand, etc.)  He also attended some very interesting and useful professional development seminars and workshops on the subject of the language travel industry.  It was a fantastic opportunity to meet and get to know many professionals in the industry and he was delighted to be able to share best practice with some of the world's leading language schools. He told us, when he returned, how proud he was to get such amazing feedback from our partners on how well we as a school are doing.  

As you can see from the photos below, life was all work and very little opportunity to see much of the local attractions ;-)

More about the IALC workshop in Brisbane

(We understood he was bringing us a koala bear back, but apparently it got lost on the way!)

Yet another inspection, yet another celebration!

It's a part of teaching life nowadays to need inspections by various groups, which always mean the teachers and staff have to work particularly hard before and during the inspection.  What better way to mark the end of the week than everyone getting together for a drink or three?

Allan Gray, Ceri Tipler, Dave Cann

Dave Cann, (background: Jacqui, Will) Alan Daysh (June) Emma Hoyle

Alan Daysh, John Hicks, Emma Hoyle, Andrew Edwards

Lewis Richards - showing what Real Men don't drink ;-)

Those Summer Nights....

2013 saw LSI Portsmouth break all records in numbers of students at the school, which in turn meant record numbers of teachers working.  So what better way to say goodbye to a thoroughly enjoyable yet a little exhausting summer than to have our traditional End of Summer Party?
It was great to see faces old and new, enjoy some wonderful food (organised by Hannah) and be fortified with liquid refreshment to help wash it all down. If there was one thing missing it was someone taking photos!  Everyone was enjoying themselves too much to get the cameras out and so all we have are the few pictures here - kindly donated by Angel.  I'm sure you can only agree that it looks like everyone is having a thoroughly fabulous time!  (The photos give the impression that only about ten people attended - this most definitely wasn't the case - there just isn't any evidence to say otherwise!)

From left: Lisa Li, Najat, Andrew, Angel and Peter

From left: Angel, Lisa Li, Ouddy, Karen and Najat

Najat and Peter (Looking a lot more relaxed now!)

Najat, Peter, Angel and Lisa Li

In the background you can just make out: Ed, Cliff, Marion, Gordon, Ceri and Shelton
in the front: Lisa Li, Ouddy, Karen, Najat, Antonio.

The evening was held in the lovely old Bridge Tavern in Old Portsmouth, a wonderfully historic pub brimming with character.  

Graduation Day - We're so proud!

The middle of July is graduation time at Portsmouth University.  It's a gorgeously colourful and happy time, with family and friends visiting Portsmouth to share the day with the graduates. Colour is everywhere, parents in all their finery, families, smiles and gowns on their way to and back from ceremonies.

We were delighted to have Xiaoxiao Zhang come back to visit us.  She studied with us in 2011 on our pre-sessional course before going on to study for her MSC in Logistics and Optimisation. Xiaoxiao Zhang proved such a star on her course, that not only did she pass with a distinction, but she also got head hunted by a very large international company because of her ground breaking research.

 With Xiaoxiao Zhang are from the left: 

Andrew Edwards the Principal, 

Cristine Purcell the course manager and 

Lisa Li Dong Marketing for China

Summer Snow in Russia

Having returned from yet another successful business trip to Moscow with my colleagues I couldn’t miss the opportunity to share my experiences with the readers of the LSI Blog.

Sunny Moscow in June welcomed us with what’s known locally as ‘summer snow’ – pollen being spread by the wind all across the streets of Moscow. This beautiful natural phenomenon takes place during 2 weeks of summer and we were lucky enough to visit Moscow at the right time! If you’re a hay fever sufferer, I suggest you postpone your visit to Moscow to July or August J

This time around we had the opportunity to set up meetings and hold talks with some of Moscow’s most renowned Universities – Lomonosov Moscow State University and Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics, and Informatics. The beautiful architecture of these Universities, the history and most importantly the hospitality of the people who work there is indescribable.

Having successfully completed the business part of the trip, we were very much looking forward to enjoying Moscow’s cultural landscape. Strolling through some of the historic streets of Moscow we ended up at Mari Vanna – the restaurant next to Patriarch's Pond with no sign (that’s right!) that serves the best Russian homemade food in Moscow. The 60’s interior makes you feel like you’re visiting someone’s flat as you sit underneath an old fashioned chandelier surrounded by mismatched plates and vintage furniture. It was wonderful to feel this cosy and ‘at home’ and a wonderful time was had by all, but alas it was time for us to return to our own homes.

A big thank you to Dmitry Mikheev for organising our visit and we look forward to returning soon. You can never have enough of the famous and enigmatic Russian 'dusha' or 'soul' J

Yet again, from Russia with love,

Margarita

Margarita Atlasova

Sales and Marketing



MESI University




Lea, Dmitry, Andrew.

 

Margarita





Ministry of Foreign Affairs



Kalina Bar

Lomonosov Moscow State University

Red Square and Moscow River

Summer Snow

Napoleon Cake at the Kalina Bar

Sturgeon at Mari Vanna

Learning the Principles of the Principal

Andrew Edwards the principal of LSI has recently given an interview which has been published on the IALC website.

This month, we speak to Andrew Edwards, Principal of LSI Portsmouth who tells us about the school and how it feels to be part of IALC.

Q: Hello Andrew, when did you join IALC and why?
I was already a member of IALC for many years with my previous school, the wonderful ELC Bristol, and now that I’ve joined the equally fantastic LSI Portsmouth it’s great to still be part of the IALC family for so many reasons. To be able to share ideas and best practice with so many experienced and like-minded people around the world is something I value massively. What makes an organisation is its people, and the people in IALC are really special.

Q: How does it feel to be part of this exclusive global community of quality language schools?
It’s a real pleasure and a privilege, to be honest. For me, despite IALC’s growth over the years, it still feels like being part of an exclusive and very supportive group of friends who are all working towards the same goal – to make their school as good as it can possibly be and to give their students the time of their lives. IALC is also great fun too and the annual workshop is always the highlight of my social calendar! (Anyone who remembers Jude Hands and the rendition of ‘Hey Jude’ at the Toronto workshop last year will know exactly what I mean. Still very much a YouTube hit, I believe :-)) ...

Continue reading....

New man at the helm!

Andrew Edwards

With Peter now gone we introduce our new principal. Someone who not only has a long teaching and marketing career behind him, but also has keen inspection experience.  Andrew Edwards, 44, came to us from Bristol at the start of 2012 to "do the best possible job to keep the students, the staff and the agents happy" he says.



Andrew with Alan - gaining wisdom from the master ;-)

With a 20 year career in Germany, Italy and the UK, fluency in German and Italian, and also with experience of teaching in the state sector, he brings with him a very fresh, and welcome view on what we do. 

Andrew's experience of working in the accommodation and marketing division, means he not only has new ideas, but the ability to see them to fulfilment, the result being that LSI already has a new self-catering student house available, and has more in the pipeline.

With the recent UKBA regulations LSI, like many schools, had an ISI inspection late last year, and while we are very proud of having had many very successful British Council inspections until now, this was a new experience for us. We were extremely grateful to be able to draw on Andrew's knowledge of inspections from being an IALC inspector since 2007 and the guidance he was able to give us.

Portsmouth, featuring Gunwharf Quays, has a great music scene, an excellent range of restaurants and a lovely long coast line, Andrew has now found his feet in the town and we hope he manages to find time to discover all that the city has to offer, and indulge his love of music, food and running.  We are sure we will have many succesful years working together.

Peter Gray - Hands Over the Reins of LSI

Thursday 13th December, 2012 was a monumental day in the history or LSI - with our great leader, mentor, friend and the founder of LSI, Peter Gray and his wife Najat, handing over the reins of the school to our new principle Andrew Edwards and the new owners of the school  NPTC (Neath Port Talbot College).

Earlier in the year we asked Peter to tell the story of how the school started; “I was 21, had finished University and wasn’t sure what to do.  My brother was in Abu Dhabi at the time and sent me a one-way ticket for a holiday.  I had a great time but they’d only sent me a one-way ticket, so I had to get a job in order to get back again!

“Of course the only job I could get there with a History and Economics degree was teaching English.  So I started to work for a complete cowboy outfit.  I had no experience, I worked there for about a year, and what I learnt was how not to run a school.

 


Very early pic - Entertaining at home - look carefully you can see
a very young Peter and Lea (our Director of Studies)!

“My brother Allan then moved to Sharjah in the Emirates.  Somehow I found myself there and set up a tiny school.  At that stage I was literally living under the classroom furniture.  The Queen had just visited and we ended up naming ourselves the ‘Queens Language Institute’.  Unfortunately our Indian office manager couldn’t pronounce ‘Qu’ and it came out as ‘Coons Ingleesh Langwidjee Institutie’ but it didn’t hold us back!

A few years passed and Peter returned to England.



Peter with an Executive student at Whitwell Road

“I asked Allan if he wanted to join me in starting a school in England, and we found a lovely place in a rural setting, which turned out to be a huge mistake, being in the wrong place.  The students who came over wanted to be in the town with all the facilities a town has to offer, and we were out in the sticks.  Anyway, after two and a half years we were effectively bankrupt.  So we moved to a much smaller, cheaper place in Portsmouth, and found a nice bank manager who helped us with a loan.  Bit by bit it started developing again.  We had about three students and six staff!”

 As time went by they realised they had to either close or expand. They made the decision to move into new premises and then after a couple of years decided to move again.

Peter with some of our lovely Arab students
at Whitwell Road

 “We were very lucky and found a much bigger place, and relatively cheaply.  Slowly we grew into it.  And then we had a brilliant piece of luck: a property developer wanted the premises and offered us a stupid offer for the building to turn it into a theme pub.  The choice then was to either get out while we were ahead or to take the next leap.  Once again we found an incredibly cheap, very large building.  I think our success has been partly luck and partly instinct.  We moved into our new building and today we have an eight floor school which is actually now one of the top schools in England.  At our busy times we have over 50 teachers.”  



Entertaining students with one of our
favourite host families from the past; Ron and Rosie

So what makes a good and successful language school? Peter continues: “The actual key point for a successful language school is to be able to keep quality staff together.  You’ve got to not be seasonal and not be too specific, as there are always problems at some time, like SARS or the Gulf war, which can stop certain nationalities coming.  Because you have good teachers you have good results and then the students tell friends, they come back or send others, and on it goes.  Our facilities are second to none.  I would say good marketing and PR is a good recipe for success.

“The best and the worst thing about owning a school is the same thing; it’s the people: it’s the students and the teachers.  It’s the biggest pain and is also the thing I’ve enjoyed the most”.


Peter and Najat are taking a very well deserved holiday for a few months.  When asked what Peter and Alan intend to do in the future?

“Both of us have a lot of projects in the pipeline, but at the same time we don’t want to cut ties totally with LSI, after all these years, we have invested so much of our lives to making this the successful place it is, so I would have to say just watch this space!”

So, Thursday 13th came, and there were speeches, presents and a lot of reflecting, particularly from the staff who have been with the school a long time.  Tears were shed, but at the same time, as Lea (the Director of Studies said in his speech) when is a good time to leave a business like this? 'When it is running very successfully and you still have your health' so although we are all sad at Peter's leaving, he is wished only wonderful things for his future, and we know we will see him again in some capacity or another (or maybe just in the pub!).



Allan - Peter - Lea
Three friends - together for 28 years
Peter at his farewell party

On the Saturday (15th), we had our annual Christmas party. which was more of a celebration of Peter's time at LSI (as opposed to the sadness of the Thursday), and Lea gave a lovely speech telling of the history of the school.  The following video shows the presentation in a pictorial form.