“Dr. Stephen Holmes, Principal and Founder of The 5R’s Partnership conducted a very effective School Board Training workshop for the Overseas School of Colombo during the weekend of September 15, 2018. Dr. Holmes’ work consisted of several weeks of initial planning in close contact with the Board Chair and with me as the Head of School. The intent and clear outcome of his preparation was to construct a meaningful training session tailor made to this school’s identified profile. The training session objectives were clearly targeted, and the outcome was notably effective in helping OSC review and refine our governance practices in a meaningful manner.

I recommend Dr. Holmes for his clear expertise in organizing and leading a very productive School Board training session for the Overseas school of Colombo.”

“Dr Stephen Holmes is a truly gifted consultant, steeped in the reality and ambition of the independent school world, but flexible and sensitive enough to customize his findings to the lived reality of particular schools.”

“Xavier College engaged Dr Stephen Holmes as our chief consultant in the facilitation of our Strategic Plan for 2018. Stephen has brought his energy, skill, global thinking and perceptiveness to intelligently inform and guide our planning process. His capacity to accurately synthesise a weighty amount of background reading, in combination with his personable engagement with a wide variety of stakeholders, enabled him to astutely grasp and assess the structural and cultural landscape of a diverse College. This in turn has enabled him to demonstrate his clear thinking and strong understanding of a complete range of critical educational issues to positively inform his strategic conversations with core leadership and management stakeholders. He has demonstrated this in personal conversations, small group consulting sessions and whole school forums. I have felt exceptional alignment and engagement in the personal sessions I have had with Stephen for Xavier College.”

“Stephen’s deep knowledge of the education sector is clear. He comes at school marketing from a different angle, forcing us think about new ways of demonstrating what we do. Stephen’s presentation reminded me that we can’t afford to sit back and market as we have been because the educational landscape is changing fast. Stephen knows what parents want and how they want to find out about it.”

“Dr Stephen Holmes facilitated an effective school board training session for Overseas School of Colombo in September 2018. He led board members in considering the role of the board, the future of the school, and how to evaluate performance of both the board and the head of school. Dr Holmes also shared his considerable expertise on school marketing and strategic planning.”

“I first met Dr Stephen Holmes several years ago and realized immediately how much of an impact he could make in the school communities we serve. His specialized knowledge and ability to present and explain it in a clear way is already yielding results in both our school and university communities. With his unique professional background, Stephen engages leaders in thoughtful dialogue to look at how they position their institutions. He is thoughtful, considerate, organized, thorough, timely, naturally committed and genuinely interested in improving the school communities he works with. He has a passion for reputation management in schools, engaging leaders in discussion to help them look at their marketing and communications work in new, strategic ways.

Every single time I’ve met with Stephen, I’ve learned something new and found new enthusiasm to introduce him to more and more CIS members. For those schools that engaged him, he fulfilled every objective they set for his work with their communities.

We then began finding ways to introduce Stephen to larger groups of our members, most recently when he keynoted at our forum on Higher Education Admission and Guidance last year in Edinburgh Scotland, a gathering of 800 university admission and school guidance professionals. Here is some of the feedback we received following Stephen’s presentation at the Forum:

“Thanks again for the best session of the conference; definitely one of the top five sessions I’ve attended at any conference in the last 18 years! This was also the FIRST session I’ve ever attended on this topic. Awesome! Your session was insightful and different than anything else I attended in CIS this year. I am very keen to share with my team and management the ideas you presented.”

I hope this helps you to see some of the impact he might make on your own community of schools. You will learn much from your engagement with him.”

“Thanks so much for your useful workshop at CIS. I thoroughly enjoyed it and definitely brought back some ideas to apply at my school.”

“Brisbane Catholic Education engaged Dr Stephen Holmes to conduct detailed research into factors affecting parental choice of schools. We were very impressed with Dr Holmes’ professional and methodical approach. His research report and recommendations will form the basis of a new marketing strategy which will strengthen our enrolment numbers and our position in the marketplace. Working with him was a very worthwhile and productive experience for our organisation with its 141 schools and 12,000 staff. I can fully recommend Dr Holmes’ and endorse his well-deserved reputation as a world leader in the field of educational marketing research and strategy development.”

“Dr Stephen Holmes has been working with a number of GEMS schools over the past year on how to differentiate each of our schools not only from each other but also from competing schools.

During that time, he has brought to us at GEMS and applied unique tools that he has developed over a long period of time specifically to provide schools with platform for identity building and differentiation, most especially through the crucial areas of teaching pedagogy and curriculum. This has provided our schools with a whole new lens as to how they might effectively distinguish themselves and build authentic positioning.”

“Thank you Stephen for giving up your time and expertise to support our Japan Council of International Schools (JCIS) group as we pondered the importance of nurturing and communicating our own reputation while set in the context of the JCIS ‘brand’ as a whole. Certainly the conversations you facilitated helped us much better understand the strength we have in our diversity as well as the synergy that we share in representing quality educational options in Japan. I’d certainly be happy to talk about our work together to any regional association considering a similar enterprise.”