IDP Education has one of the most peculiar origin stories of listed companies, creating from scratch a world-first industry that is now Australia’s third-largest export sector.has surfed a tidal wave of demand for study in English-speaking destinations. Six million people now travel to another country to study.
The strength of the company can be seen through its figures during the pandemic. With borders closed and students learning from home, IDP still reached $428 million in offshore revenue in 2021, down from $529.7 million in 2020.Its beginnings were humble, emerging in 1969 as a government scheme to link Australia’s universities research with Asia and as a soft diplomatic power. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, students had been coming here to study under the scholarship-based Colombo Plan.
As numbers increased, it became evident that a test was required to determine and verify the English-language skills of prospective students. In 1989, the groundbreaking IELTS – International English Language Testing System – was launched in partnership with the British Council and Cambridge University.
By 2006, numbers were booming and the 38 university shareholders came to the realisation that they did not have the necessary skill sets to run it efficiently and profitably.Brothers Andrew and Paul Bassat were riding high with their online jobs board seek.com and were on the lookout for adjacencies to their core product. Universities, they figured, was a way of connecting education and employment and improving the value chain of seek.
Barkla pushed a diversity agenda, with the company extending IELTS operations to new markets, oversaw the acquisition of aligned companies and the development of a new and sophisticated online platform.