About Us

Isis was founded in 1991 by David Brown and Robert Darell. The company started operating outbound tours for UK University students through the academic year from September to June. During the summer, we established summer English languages courses for foreign students.

Today Isis still operates its Student Tours programme and has become one of only four companies to be accredited by the various Universities’ Purchasing Consortia. Every year, we carry over 12,000 students on these educational tours.

The Isis Summer programmes have grown steadily in size and popularity and we now run 14 centres welcoming over 10,000 foreign students every summer.

Unable to source any financial support from the banks, the founders turned to the Prince’s Trust. The Trust offered a £5,000 loan, as well as two mentors to help see the business through the first 18 months. Isis has grown to be one of the top 10 businesses sponsored by the Trust, and still remains closely associated with it today.

In 1993 the business relocated from Worthing to London when it bought the Greenwich School of English, an adult English language training centre. In 1997 moved to its current, larger, premises in central Greenwich.

In 1999, Isis bought a building in the centre of Brighton and opened the Brighton School of English, offering General English courses. In 2003, Isis bought Avatar Education Ltd., from its founder owner. The business offers high quality summer courses to individual students, and trades under the name Bucksmore Summer Programmes.

In 2006, Isis bought Travel Experiences, a tour operating business offering study-oriented trips to secondary schools. It trades under the name of Studytrips. Since becoming part of Isis Education and under careful guidance of our team, our school tours programme has gone from strength to strength.

In 2009, we took over the well established and highly respected Key Stage Travel that specialises in history and battlefield tours. This has become part of the Studytrips programme as we seek to establish a collection of niche educational tour programmes. This will include the launch of our Discover Music and Performance brochure in April 2010. In February 2010, we were delighted to acquire the Oxford Tutorial College, based in the centre of Oxford next to Oriel College. Over the past 20 years, the college has built up a reputation for being the best tutorial college in Oxford and we will further develop its portfolio of pre-university courses with the launch of the Oxford Pathway Foundation Programme in September 2010.

Another key development for 2010 will be the refurbishment of our Greenwich premises incorporating a new Head Office and major upgrade to the Study Centre. The Journey continues……