One of the country’s oldest and most well-known organisations in technical education is to be sold – ending nearly 150 years of charitable ownership, FE Week can reveal.
City & Guilds, the awarding, assessment and training giant, will be acquired from its parent charity, the City & Guilds of London Institute, founded in 1878, for an undisclosed sum by PeopleCert, a Greek-owned global certification company, at the end of this month.
The deal is said to unlock “significant investment” for City & Guilds’ awarding, assessment and training businesses, avoiding the need for internal restructures.
It comes amid ongoing reforms to technical education qualifications, apprenticeship assessment and higher-level training, disrupting market conditions for the awarding sector.
City & Guilds of London Institute will continue its charitable functions, such as funding bursaries for disadvantaged learners, conferring “fellowships” and running the Princess Royal Training Awards, through the City & Guilds Foundation.
The charity’s trustees said the foundation will benefit from “a very significant sum” as a result of the sale, including up to £200 million in “gross assets under management” and up to five years’ rent-free office space, allowing it to grow to become an “innovative social investor and change maker”.
All awarding and assessment functions, and City & Guilds’ subsidiary training businesses, including providers Gen2, Intertrain and Trade Skills 4U, will transfer to new owners but remain under the City & Guilds brand.
City & Guilds is the second largest qualification awarding organisation in England by number of certificates issued and the largest provider of apprenticeship end-point assessments, according to Ofqual.
Staff were informed today that the sale was necessary to secure the long-term future of both the charity and the awarding and assessment businesses. It marks the end of a two-year search for investors, without which “we would need to look at our organisation structures to ensure we remained sustainable”, leaders said.
Dame Ann Limb, chair of City & Guilds of London Institute, said her trustees had found “an organisation with similar educational vision and values” and “a track record of successful delivery in people and technology” in buyer PeopleCert.
She added: “Almost 150 years ago, the City & Guilds of London Institute broke the mould by creating an organisation, together with City of London livery companies, that served the skills and employment needs of the second industrial revolution.
“Now in the age of the fourth industrial revolution, it is right to take steps to ensure City & Guilds thrives for another century and beyond.”
CEO Kirstie Donnelly and 98 per cent of City & Guilds’ 1,400 staff will transfer to the new owners. Remaining staff who work on charitable functions will remain employees of the City & Guilds Foundation.
Donelly will report to PeopleCert CEO and founder Byron Nicolaides and a new City & Guilds Limited board.
Donnelly said the sale “brings the freedom to compete, the investment to innovate and the market access to scale in the UK and internationally alongside a parent company that shares the City & Guilds values and ambition”.
An interim CEO, Mike Adamson, has been appointed to run the foundation. Adamson is currently the chair of the homelessness charity St Mungo’s and was CEO of the British Red Cross for nine years. Limb will remain in post as chair.
The buyer
The acquisition means City and Guilds’ awarding and training services will now operate under the name City and Guilds Limited, which has already gained approval from regulators.
It will be the second, but dominant, Ofqual-regulated awarding organisation in the PeopleCert group of companies alongside LanguageCert, most known for its international ESOL qualifications.
Alongside delivering language examinations in over 200 countries, PeopleCert also certifies the PRINCE2 project management and ITIL IT management courses.
Byron Nicolaides founded PeopleCert in 2000. Following a EUR450 million acquisition of Axelos in 2021, PeopleCert was described as the first Greek ‘unicorn’ company owing to its combined value exceeding EUR1 billion.
Nicolaides said the City & Guilds acquisition begins “an exciting new chapter of growth and unlocks even more potential together”.
“By investing in City & Guilds’ products, platforms and people, we’ll deliver even greater impact. We’re especially pleased to join forces with their talented employees and senior leadership team as we shape the future together,” he added.
Testing reforms for awarding
While City & Guilds’ group income has grown year on year since the pandemic, from £130 million in financial year 2020-21 to £174 million in 2023-24, so has its expenditure. The organisation made a small net surplus of £3.6 million in 2023-24, recovering from a near £10 million loss the year before.
It was one of the first awarding organisations to throw its weight behind T Levels, alongside Pearson and NCFE. It won the first licences to develop and award T Levels in onsite construction and building services engineering for construction in 2020.
When the licences came up for renewal in 2023, City & Guilds didn’t retender. The onsite construction T Level was later scrapped due to lack of demand.
Alongside retendering for City & Guilds’ other current T Levels in engineering and management, the government is also embarking on reforms to change the apprenticeship assessment system, potentially reducing reliance on external end-point assessment organisations, such as City & Guilds.
Last month, Downing Street announced the upcoming post-16 education white paper will contain proposals to grant colleges and providers their own awarding powers for higher-level courses. This was part of the prime minister’s flagship pledge for two-thirds of young people to become higher-level qualified through academic, technical or apprenticeship training routes by age 25.
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