A K12 School Group valued at $14.5 billion!

Five Oakridge schools in India are part of the same education company.

Bengaluru. Two campuses in Hyderabad. Mohali. Visakhapatnam.

Together, Nord Anglia says its five Indian schools educate more than 7,000 students.^[1]

Now zoom out.

Nord Anglia currently reports 90 schools across 37 countries and more than 100,000 students.^[2]

And in March 2025, a consortium including EQT, Neuberger Berman Private Markets, CPP Investments, CF Alba and Dubai Holding completed an acquisition of Nord Anglia that valued the business at $14.5 billion.^[3]

That is why I think Nord Anglia is worth discussing.

Not because $14.5 billion is a large number. But because it forces a more interesting question:

What exactly are investors buying when they buy a school group at this scale?

First, what is Nord Anglia?

Nord Anglia is a global premium K–12 school network.

Its current school directory spans 37 countries and multiple curricula, including the International Baccalaureate, English, American and other national programmes.^[2]

India is already part of that network through five Oakridge International Schools: Bengaluru, Hyderabad Bachupally, Hyderabad Gachibowli, Mohali and Visakhapatnam.^[1]

The India page says those five schools serve more than 7,000 students from 21 nationalities and combine IB, IGCSE and CBSE pathways.^[1]

So this is not an abstract global-school story with no connection to India.

Indian families are already inside the platform.

Who acquired it?

The March 2025 transaction was completed by a global institutional-investor consortium.

EQT was part of the group alongside Neuberger Berman Private Markets, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, CF Alba and Dubai Holding.^[3]

Importantly, EQT was not a newcomer. Its own announcement says it had supported Nord Anglia since 2008 and helped the group complete more than 21 acquisitions from 2017 to the transaction date.^[3]

At closing, the business had more than 80 schools in 33 countries and over 90,000 students.^[3]

So investors were not buying one famous school.

They were buying an organisation that had already shown it could add schools, integrate them and keep expanding across countries.

So is that $161,000 per student?

Mathematically, using the disclosed floor:

$14.5 billion ÷ 90,000 students = about $161,000 per student.

Because the announcement said *more than* 90,000 students, the actual ratio at the time would have been lower.

But I would not call that “value per student”.

A child was not being priced at $161,000.

The consortium acquired the business: its existing schools, brands, operating systems, admissions capability, teacher recruitment and development, central management, digital infrastructure, relationships and future cash flows.

Nord Anglia also operates a shared Global Campus connecting students across its network and promotes collaborations with organisations including MIT, Juilliard and UNICEF.^[4]

We cannot tell from the public transaction release how much of the $14.5 billion valuation was attributed to any one of these capabilities.

Nor does the release provide the revenue, EBITDA, debt and valuation bridge needed to calculate a clean transaction multiple.^[3]

That is an important limitation.

Why this matters for India

Indian school groups increasingly talk about scale.

More campuses. More cities. More students.

Nord Anglia shows why the important word may actually be platform.

Five individual Oakridge schools in India can draw on a network that spans 90 schools globally. The same central organisation can potentially support leadership development, teacher recruitment, curriculum resources, technology and cross-school learning across many campuses.

That does not automatically make education better. And a global brand does not remove the need for a strong principal, teachers and culture inside each school.

But it changes what an investor may be underwriting.

Not merely the buildings already standing.

The question becomes whether the organisation has built capabilities that can travel from school to school—and whether those capabilities allow it to grow without rebuilding everything from scratch.

That is why the $161,000 division is memorable but secondary.

The real story is that investors valued a global K–12 platform at $14.5 billion. The interesting question for Indian school builders is what has to become repeatable before a collection of schools starts being valued like a platform.