MGT300

Horizon Education Group Enters Into Education Partnership Agreement With Institute Putra To Operate Universities In Malaysia

Apr 09, 2003

SINGAPORE (9 April 2003) - Mainboard-listed Horizon Education and Technologies Limited ("Horizon"), a leading Education and e-Learning solutions provider and educational technology company today announced that it has entered into an education partnership agreement (the "Agreement") with Institute Putra ("IP"), a subsidiary of Kumpulan Langkawi Resort Group ('KLR") to manage and operate private universities in Malaysia. IP has also been awarded with the Universiti Pendrikan Sultan Idris ("UPSI") franchise to conduct Information, Communication and Education Technology ("ICET") courses. The term of the Agreement will be for a period of fifteen years.

IP will launch the UPSI education programs in May this year. IP will offer, Bachelor of Education for Science & Technology, Maths and English. In October 2003, IP will launch the Bachelor of Education for Early Childhood. These courses will be conducted at KLR's largest campus at Nilai.

The initial focus will be on "Education Degrees" as there is a great demand for ICET competent teachers and such programs are not widely offered in Malaysia. All courses will qualify for Malaysian Government education loans. KLR will provide bridging loans for their students until the Government loans arrive. For the school year 2003-04, student enrolment in Nilai is expected to be in the range of 5,000 to 7,000.


KLR is a property development group with experience in the development of Education Townships in Malaysia. Education Townships are townships developed around a tertiary institution campus. KLR currently operates four such campuses: two in Langkawi, one each in Malacca and Nilai, with an additional campus planned for Johor. The Malacca and Nilai campuses total RM$600m in value. Nilai campus can accommodate up to 12,000 students and Malacca campus up to 2,000 students.

KLR will provide the campus with state-of-the-art ICET facilities and infrastructure to support the education programmes, manage the registration of all programmes with the relevant authorities in Malaysia.

Mr Teh Hock Seong, General Manager of KLR, said: "We have chosen Horizon because of its strong track record in providing education services in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. We are particularly impressed with Horizon's experience in providing tertiary level education programmes in Hong Kong where they have more than 2,000 students. We would like to focus on our core competencies in property development and let Horizon take care of the education operations. If the demand is good, we have committed to Horizon to build more facilities and operate more of similar arrangements. Our intention is to let Horizon operate the campus at Johor upon its completion. Our partnership will now manage the largest private college operation in Malaysia."

LTG (Ret) Ng Jui Ping, Group Chairman and CEO commented, "We have developed a synergistic partnership with KLR. By leveraging off the relationships that we have established with international universities over the years, and with the high quality infrastructure developed by KLR, we are confident of providing education of a quality comparable to those provided by the national universities in Malaysia."


Mr Faisal Alsagoff, Group President of Horizon, added "We will harness Horizon's vast experience in Information Technology and expertise in providing educational solutions to a broad spectrum of consumers, to create some of the best private tertiary institutions in Malaysia. The campus will be equipped with the latest Information, Communication and Education Technology infrastructure, state of art teaching facilities, digital content, library, clubhouse, Multimedia Centre, sports facilities, hostel, accommodation for lecturers and Alumni Clubhouse",

The Horizon Group is represented in four main sectors of the Education / e-Learning market: preschool to pre-university, tertiary education, corporate training and the distribution of educational multimedia products. Under the Agreement, Horizon will utilise its core expertise to manage and administer the tertiary education programmes at the universities. Horizon will be responsible for programme selection and content management, hiring of lecturers, marketing of programmes to potential students, student enrolment and general administration. Horizon has the exclusive rights to offer extensive undergraduate and post-graduate programmmes in Education, Early Childhood, Nursing and Music.

Horizon and KLR will leverage on their resources and efforts to market the education programmes in Malaysia and overseas. The partnership with KLR will further strengthen Horizon's position as a provider of tertiary education in Malaysia.