Our mission is to continue to lead the way in providing services for UK boarding schools to successfully recruit pupils from a diverse range of countries in a cost-effective way. We do this by making it easy for schools to meet and develop partnerships with a global network of trusted educational agents.
In 2006 Suzanne and Antony Rowse set up the British Boarding Schools Workshop to provide a cost-effective way for British boarding schools to recruit international students. Having worked as the Marketing Director at a British boarding school for 8 years, Suzanne understood the challenges schools faced in overseas marketing and recruitment. During this time Suzanne implemented a successful international marketing strategy which enabled the school to achieve its targets of increasing the number of boarders and spreading the diversity of nationalities. Key to this success was the development of partnerships with overseas agents, which involved visiting agents in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
The BBS Workshop brings together quality educational agents with representatives from UK boarding schools. The first Workshop, held in 2006, sold out in just two weeks. It was very well received with excellent feedback from delighted attendees. To meet demand for places from both agents and schools we now hold two events each year in March and November at the 4* Radisson Blu Edwardian Hotel at London's International Heathrow airport, which is perfect for our international delegation.
The Workshops have quickly gained a reputation for being high quality, targeted events, which have been attended by over 250 UK boarding school staff. Our range of services have been developed to includes international strategy training days for school staff, training days for agents, Agent Fam Trips (visits to schools) and BBS Connected, our online portal for schools and agents to search, share, connect and engage.
Connected was first launched in March 2015 and a new version was launched in May 2017. It was designed to enable schools and trusted agents to connect beyond our Workshops, facilitating quick and easy communication day in, day out. For the first time, agents can find the right schools for their client families by using a unique and detailed search faclity across the database of 170+ UK boarding schools, colleges and summer schools. In the same way, school staff can search the database of 700 international agent offices, view detailed profiles, set up groups for quick and easy messaging, access market intelligence reports, training videos, expert advice and a lot more.
Our website provides information about all our events and resources; we hope you enjoy browsing the site to find out more and we look forward to working with you.
Contact us
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Suzanne Rowse - Director
Suzanne has been working in boarding schools’ marketing for almost 20 years after international marketing roles in industry. For eight years she worked as the Marketing Director at a day and boarding school in Kent where she helped grow pupil numbers by 30% and created diversity in the boarding community. In 2006, Suzanne and her husband, Antony, set up the British Boarding Schools Workshop to provide a cost-effective way for schools to develop agent partnerships and recruit from a diverse range of countries. In 2015 BBS Connected was launched as an online community for schools and agents and a digital toolkit for marketers. Suzanne has worked as an international marketing consultant for boarding schools, is a regular conference speaker and has a son at boarding school and a daughter at prep school.
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Antony Rowse - Director
Antony is a technical illustrator and graphic designer and worked freelance until setting up the company with Suzanne in 2006. He is responsible for managing the visual aspects of the brand and oversees the production of the high quality Workshop handbooks. Antony also manages our IT systems and finances.
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Kathy Campbell - Head of International Marketing and Development
Kathy Campbell has joined the team and her role will be mainly focussed on the delivery of our Connected service. Kathy brings to the role a vast knowledge and experience of the sector, having lead the Admissions & Marketing teams in two HMC schools (Stowe and Shrewsbury School), as well as carrying out a variety of consultancy work for schools.
As a Graphic Design and Marketing graduate, Kathy began her working life in London in the publishing and design industry. Following the birth of her daughters, Kathy opted to make a career change to fit around family life – or so she thought! She first returned to education as a design lecturer/teacher and over the last 18 years she has been fortunate enough to have been given considerable responsibility in a variety of contexts at independent day and boarding schools. Having worked on the merger of Dame Alice Harpur School and Bedford High School for Girls, followed by senior leadership posts at Stowe School and Shrewsbury School (the latter focussing on the launch of full co-education), Kathy set up Pair Education Ltd in January 2016.
Since then she has been providing strategic admissions and marketing advice to a wide range of independent schools alongside speaking at a range of events in the UK and abroad. Her work with Pair Education has given Kathy an even greater knowledge of the sector and consequently she has been in considerable demand to speak at school INSET days, AMDIS (now AMCIS) events and at recruitment fairs internationally. Kathy has a close personal knowledge of many international recruitment markets (particularly Kenya and the UAE) and is also acutely aware of the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the challenges of overseas recruitment.
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Sarah Heaslip - Head of Operations and Partnerships
Sarah joined the team in June 2017 and many of you will recognize her as she has been helping us out at the Workshops for over five years. Sarah is responsible for supporting 2,000 member users of Connected and works closely with Jan to further develop the Connected platform in terms of functionality and content. Prior to joining us she worked for an international media company (which organises exhibitions worldwide), in global operations, implementing procurement projects worldwide and managing the company’s travel.
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Alicia Houghton - Administration Manager
Alicia joined the company in August 2012 and is responsible for organising the Workshops, fam trips and other events such as training days and user groups. She particularly enjoys the opportunity to use her knowledge of the boarding sector to support school staff in their roles. Prior to joining our team she had worked for almost 13 years at a day and boarding school in Kent, initially as Registrar and subsequently as Marketing Manager. During her time at the school, she regularly took part in the Workshops and hosted a group of agents as part of a familiarisation trip.
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