Westerfield College recently got approval to open a campus in the United Kingdom. The founder of the school, Mr. Michael Dosunmu, spoke with GBENGA SALAU about the development and sundry issues in the nation’s education sector. Excerpts:

What informed the decision to establish the Westerfield College in The United Kingdom considering your schools are not in all cities in Nigeria?
The goal is not to be in every state or every metropolis in Nigeria. And if you ask me, we have conquered Nigeria because we are exactly where we want to be. We purposely built our first school in Yaba, Lagos State. So we are intentional about what we wanted to do; the kind of education we wanted to deliver, which was what we did on our first campus in Yaba. When Yaba became too small, God granted us grace to be where we are now in Victoria Island, which is six times bigger than Yaba. We also wanted to cater for the northern part of Nigeria. So, after setting up in Lagos, we moved to Kano. It was a strategic move to Kano. We are also in Abuja, which is a melting pot for Nigerians. Abuja defines Nigeria and is home for all Nigerians. Abuja typifies the spirit of Nigeria. So, for me, we have conquered Nigeria.
 
On our choice for the United Kingdom (UK), what we offer here is called International Foundation Programme and the Cambridge A Levels. These are programmes that are geared toward getting students into the UK. It is called sixth form education in the UK. So, we set out as a British school from the very first day. We have a world-class mindset from the very beginning. We were careful about crafting the mission, vision, goals and core values of the school. The culture that informs the way we drive the school is global from the very beginning and we did not want to do a school that is just of Nigerian standard. The UK expansion is actually because our vision has been global from day one. We wanted to teach students from Asia, Europe, and America.
 
There are places that are called source markets for students and there are places that are called destination markets for students. Nigeria is not yet a destination market for students. But we are proudly Nigerian and that vision of teaching the world still remains and wherever it can be actualised we will go out to do it.
 
The UK has a history of being an amazing study destination. It is a top-one or top-two in the world. The UK is a very strong and renowned destination that sells itself. It lends credence to what we are doing, especially as our programme is built around the British educational system.

What were your educational and career backgrounds before setting up Westerfield College?
 I got into the University of Lagos as a teenager. It was the only university that I had wanted to attend and I studied Mass Communication. Before I got to the university, I had been presenting on radio and television. My dream in life was to be a radio or television broadcaster because I had been doing teenage programmes on Raypower radio and the African Independent Television (AIT).
  
However, may God bless those who set up University of Lagos’ Department of Mass Communication that prepared me for what I am doing today.  I got my first job as a year two student in the university. I was invited to do a presentation at a welcome party for British universities visiting Nigeria. I was 19 then. I attended and after my presentation, I was asked if I wanted a job by one of the universities, the University of Bedfordshire, which was called the University of Luton at the time. The job waited for me for two years so that I could graduate from the university. That was how this whole journey started for me.
 
Later on I went to the UK to study Human Resource Management at the Masters’ level at the University of Hertfordshire, which is where my career actually started. My job was to build the university’s brand in Nigeria. I did that for five years before Westerfield College started. Also, I went to the University of Northern Carolina in the United States of America for an MBA.

How did you end up a proprietor of an educational institution with no background in education?
 It started with an offer to stay in Nigeria and work for the University of Luton, which introduced me to education marketing. I did that for the university for four years. Then I left and set up my business in Nigeria to represent and build the brand of the University of Hertfordshire in Nigeria for five years. My first business was Mode Education that recruits students into post graduate and undergraduate courses for what is called foundation programme in an embedded college that offers pre-university courses, which is called Year Zero in the UK. That recruitment into Year Zero programmes was what birthed Westerfield College.

How are you structuring your template for the UK’s campus of Westerfield College?
  The template we have deployed in Nigeria is what we are going to take global. We have a working Nigeria system at Westerfield College, which is what we are going to export. So, we are going to be a proudly Nigerian school in the UK. We are going to be ambassadors of Nigeria in the UK. We owe a responsibility to Nigeria to do it well and ensure that people can say good things about Nigeria.
 
Our vision is to impact the child, impact the world and a success story for us is a story of changed lives. Our goal is to have students who can attribute their successes to the experience they had at Westerfield College. This is exactly what we are going to take to the world.

Will you be targeting the Nigerian community in the UK?
  No. Our target in the UK is not the Nigerian community. We intend to be a proudly Nigerian school in the UK that is teaching students from all over the world. It does not matter to us where the kids are coming from. At the moment, we have established offices in 10 countries. We are in China, India, Botswana, Egypt, Morocco, Ghana, the UK, U.S.A, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The impact is what matters.

What unique offerings will you be providing to make your UK school a proudly Nigerian educational institution?
  The programmes we are delivering here are not Nigerian curriculum. We offer the British education system. And we are going to offer that in the UK. In terms of things that will make us proudly Nigerian, the first is food. We are going to have British foods and at the same time have a global café that will sell Nigerian foods like jollof rice, suya, etc.
 
Secondly, Nigerian music is global at the moment. So do not be shocked when you see Davido, Whiskey, Bona Boy, etc. Our campus in Midland, United Kingdom, is very beautiful. It is close to 100 acres of land with rolling hills and a clock tower that was used in the world war.
 
I worship at Daystar Christian Centre and there is going to be a youth church of Daystar on the campus. There are good things in the culture of Nigeria. Everything good about our culture in raising young people will be promoted while keeping with the culture of the UK. We have halls of residence for girls and boys. We have swimming pools, football pitches, lawn tennis courts, cricket pitch, and our own Japanese garden. We have a lake and people can fish on campus. But we are going to be very exclusive and selective. Only the best 150 students across the world will be accepted in the school every year.

Are there Nigerians in Diaspora who are bringing their children to Westerfield College in Nigeria?
  Yes! There are lots of Nigerians in diaspora who like to send their kids here. That happens.

What are your views on how to strengthen the Nigerian educational system?
  There is a lot of emphasis right now on the university system, but I think that that is not where the problem is. What I will recommend is to go far below the university system and fix the elementary education. It is sickening that we have Nigerian university graduates who cannot speak good English, which is the sole language of instruction in Nigeria. But you do not learn to speak good English in university. You learn it in primary school and not even secondary school.
 
I think that what we need to do in Nigeria is to fix the primary level of education.  It is broken from that stage and that is what my recommendation will be to the government. We need to fix primary and secondary education and the university will fix itself eventually.

What has been the success rate of Westerfield College?
  There are two success rates you can measure. The first one is academic success, which is 100 per cent for students who complete their courses. For progression to university, it is about 95 per cent. We are proud to say that we have 95 per cent of our students being placed into universities across the world, including Nigeria. We currently have our students in 100 universities around the world in Canada, Australia, the UK, United States of America, Grenada, Spain, Hungary, France, Republic of Ireland, Nigeria, and Ukraine. Worthy to mention is that Grenada is a very important country for us because it has one of the best medical schools in the world, the St. George’s University School of Medicine. Students come to Westerfield College and take a three-term programme, which gives them access into the third year of the medical school.

What are the programmes Westerfield College will be offering in the UK?
  We are going to offer five different programmes. In Nigeria, we are offering two programmes. We offer an international foundation programme with 10 streams that are designed after faculties in the universities such as law, engineering, etc. These foundation programmes are further broken down into destinations. We have a foundation programme for the UK, USA, Canada and Australia. They are all under the International Foundation Programme.
   
Then we have the A’Level Cambridge programme, which is a two year programme that gets students into first year university study in any country. In the UK, we are offering an additional set of programmes. We are still going to offer the same foundation programme with the exception that it is not going to be designed to take you to any other country. You must go to a UK university. What we will offer in the UK is called Degree Foundation Programme.
 
The second programme is the Cambridge A’Level. The third programme is Summer Camp for children from age 10 to 17 only for the holiday period. We will also offer a range of English programmes such as the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). It is for students from countries like China where English is not widely spoken. They come to us to do one year of English class courses to get them ready for university. The EAP is where students learn specialised English for a particular degree. Our fifth programme is pre-masters; it is open to students from any country in the world whose bachelor’s degree is deemed inadequate to get them into universities. They come to us to study a one semester course and that will prepare them, upscale their academic and English language ability to get into the universities. These are the five programmes that we offer in the UK.

What challenges did you encounter while trying to set up in the UK?
  First, it took us four years of mostly rejection to find the right place to site the school. It was a difficult process. We experienced rejection at the site where the school is presently sited until it came through. But getting approval from the government was not difficult.