SINGAPORE: In a recent LinkedIn post, the entrepreneur Joel Chue wrote about how inspiring he found EtonHouse founder Ng Gim Choo’s commitment to her vision of play-focused education, in spite of people telling her it was not what they wanted.
Although it lost S$1 million in its first year, the Singapore-founded school has since found remarkable success.
“Today, EtonHouse runs 120 schools across 11 countries. 20,000 students. S$200 million in revenue,” wrote Mr Chue.
He noted in his post that while EtonHouse is well known in Singapore, there were facts about Ms Ng that he had only recently become aware of.
An accountant by profession, Ms Ng had been an audit manager at Ernst & Young and a partner in an audit firm. But when their family moved to London due to her husband’s work, she“gave up a career she’d worked ten years to build” and raised her children for the next dozen years, first in London, then in Hong Kong.
While her younger daughter was in a class in London, Ms Ng had a life-changing and unforgettable moment.
“Before the move, her daughter had been scolded at a Singapore kindergarten for colouring a morning glory purple instead of red. The girl refused to go to school after that. In London, Ng Gim Choo volunteered at Pembridge Hall, her daughter’s new school. Teachers got down to eye level with kids. Children were excited to learn, not afraid of getting it wrong,” wrote Mr Chue.
At the age of 43, she began her second career when their family returned to Singapore, opening the first EtonHouse in 1995 at Broadrick Road, even though she had no background in education.
“Parents walked in, saw kids playing, and asked: ‘What did my child learn today?’ The kids said: ‘We played.’ Parents didn’t want to pay $1,000 a month for their children to play,” Mr Chue added.
And while many told Ms Ng she needed to change the way the school was run to make it more like other schools, she said no, believing that “Children come first, teachers second, and shareholder returns come last.”
“Not exactly the pitch you’d give an investor burning through a million a year,” he noted.
However, the results began to speak for themselves when the students, encouraged to be curious, were articulate and confident even at the primary school level, and their parents began to tell other parents about how their children were developing.
Mr Chue wrote that what has stuck with him is that “Every business book tells you to listen to the customer. Adapt. Iterate. Give them what they want. Ng Gim Choo’s customers told her exactly what they wanted. And she said no.
The hardest thing a founder can do isn’t pivoting. It’s refusing to.” /TISG
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